“These copies that were made centuries later contain numerous mistakes. Thousands of mistakes. Tens of thousands of mistakes. Hundreds of thousands of mistakes…” Whatever, Bart. Don’t have a cow.
Update: a good amount of discussion has ensued in response to this post, but mostly on Facebook. You can find some of the questions posed and my answers at a follow-up post here on my personal blog, theology like a child.
Despite the picture and provocative caption that leads off this post, it is not really about the molehill that is Bart Ehrmann. It rather attempts to critically address, in a thoughtful way, the modernist / Enlightenment world of biblical criticism from which he has come. I make no claim to expertise in what I write of below – my hope is that this post and any subsequent discussion can get interested persons, including myself, thinking more about this important topic.
Pastor Jordan Cooper, the owner of this blog, has written and podcasted about how he is in favor of supporting what is called “the Majority text” over what we today call “the critical text” (think Nestle-Aland, now in its 28th ed.). In his support of this “Ecclesiastical text”, he is decidedly against the mainstream of biblical scholarship.
I think that Pastor Cooper has done us a service in clearly stating his viewpoint and giving persons an accessible introduction to these important issues. If you have not had a chance to look at these yet, I encourage you to do so (here is another good introductory post).
My own view is also that what we might call the Byzantine text is the text that we should trust (and my reading of a recent scholarly treatise on this topic further confirms me in my own view, which I lay out below[i]).
Why do I think this? In brief, I believe that God, in His providence, preserved His word in the churches of the East, and that this word performed two critical functions in history: a) to provide a common, shared text for the churches of the Eastern churches ; and b) to provide a needed corrective to the churches in the West, for whom the highly flawed Latin Vulgate had become the default biblical text.
During the time of the Reformation, apologists from the Roman Catholic church argued that the Greek text of the New Testament and the Hebrew text of the Old Testament had been corrupted and that the Vulgate alone preserved the authentic text. And yet, when it came to the Latin Vulgate, many could see clearly that distrust had rightly been earned here, and a “shake-up” of sorts was necessary. This largely came in the form of what we call the “Textus Receptus” of a Roman Catholic scholar named Erasmus. He introduced this new edition of the Greek text of the New Testament when he did (based largely on what were understood to be Byzantine copies of the original biblical text in Greek) in order to fix problems in the Vulgate. The rest, in the “Protestant” West at least, is history.
Probabilities, i.e. death by a thousand cuts: “If exegesis is to be practiced historico-critically, it must use the methods of secular historical science, i.e. criticism which allows only probability judgments, and the principles of analogy and correlation (cf. [Walter] Troeltsch[, pictured]). Thereby it subjects itself in principle to secular-historical judgment” (theses presented for discussion in the University of Munich, quoted by Kurt Marquart on p. 114, Anatomy of an Explosion)At least, until the end of the 17th century and beginnings of the 18th century, when some doubts about the Textus Receptus’ synonymity with the original texts of the Bible (the “autographs”) begin to emerge – and the “scientific” study (more on the reason for the scare quotes below) of the biblical text took off in earnest. This culminated in a way in the early 1880s, with the publication of Westcott and Hort’s critical edition of the Greek New Testament, which deferred heavily to a couple of manuscripts containing the entire Bible (from the 4th century): Codex Vaticanus and Code Sinaiticus (see more here).
My impression is that this quest was largely wrongheaded, but let me be clear about why I think this is so. I actually do not have difficulty with a person arguing that these early editions of the Bible, produced as they obviously were with the imprimatur of the church’s hierarchy, are basically indicative of the biblical text the Western church has recognized, preserved, and passed down (here, I think, it is like the Apostle Paul says: “let each be convinced in his own mind”![ii]). In other words, in an effort to address the problems clearly seen in the Vulgate, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater (again, the Vulgate would seem to have been largely based on codexes like Vaticanus and Sinaiticus), but this did not need to be the case.
The problem, however, is that the discussion about these things in the church today, because of the impact of a modern scientific and technological mindset(as opposed to using something more akin to a careful legal case) that permeates the academy, basically reduces to the quantitative, i.e. to numbers and percentages. In brief, those advocating for the ever-changing critical text in the train of Westcott and Hort usually do so on the basis of the numbers of the earliest manuscripts (which, as a whole, do tend to conform more to codexes Vatincanus and Sinaiticus), while those in the minority who advocate for what they call the “Majority Text” (basically, the “Byzantine Text”) usually do so on the basis of the total number of manuscripts from the first copies of the Bible up until the Middle Ages.[iii]
“[Descartes] declared that allpast beliefs, allideasinherited from family or state, or indoctrinated from infancy onwards by ‘authorities’ (masters, priests) must be cast into doubt, and examined in complete freedom by the individual subject… – Luc Ferry, discussing the impact of Rene Descartes, pictured (italics and bold mine).In short, I think what this really shows – for all involved – is a lack of trust in the church, and does not show a proper deference to its authority. In general, I suggest a further implication of this, because God preserves His word in His church (a word which is sufficiently clear even to unbelievers – they can indeed, begin to understand the Scriptures and its core theme), is a lack of trust in God and a lack of deference to His authority.[iv]
Speaking of numbers, I am guessing that I might have lost upwards of 99% of the Christians in America with that statement, but stick with me here as I explain my reasoning!
Even as Jesus Christ Himself urged the laity of his day to obey those who sat in “Moses’ seat”, He nevertheless blamed those same church leaders for a variety of theological errors (painful detail here). And yet, in spite of this, He trusted that the Scriptures the church had received had been reliably preserved by God. Jesus’ default position was not that God’s assembly, or church, was the corrupter of the biblical texts, but its grateful recipient.
So, why can’t the churches of the East simply be thankful for and trust the biblical texts that they have received? And why can’t the churches that used the Greek text of Erasmus – largely produced from the aforementioned texts – largely do the same? And why can’t those who think that we should defer to what has been called the more “Alexandrian” “text-type” (this is what the critical, or Nestle-Aland text, is largely based on), simply talk about receiving the text as well, apart from the problems with the Latin Vulgate that derived from them (these texts being exemplified by, but perhaps not limited to, codexes like Vaticanus and Sinaiticus)?
Am I saying that it is always wrong to doubt the church? What about “trust but verify”?
To answer these questions in brief, “no, it is not wrong to distrust the church (see more reflection here), but distrust, where it exists, ought to be earned, i.e. justified” (think “Donation of Constantine”[v]) and “’trust but verify’ is really an oxymoronic statement.”[vi]
The fact of the matter is that when it came to receiving the biblical text, distrust was never truly justified, even if some, of course (like the deists and others with anti-Christian motivations), were eager to say that it had been earned. What happened, it seems to me, is that some persons became aware of variants in the various text-traditions (realizing there were rough “text types”, or perhaps, as some say today, “text clusters”), and started exploring more. I don’t have an issue with this per se, because I do believe that God has made all of us simply curious about this or that, and I don’t doubt that he raised up persons who were curious about this kind of thing as well – and that he provided avenues for them, at their unique point in geography and history, to begin further exploration.
The problem, however, is that this exploration was not openly explored and discussed in the church, and with a proper respect of church authorities and their responsibilities in mind.[vii] Persons in the church hierarchy, understandably, were eager to safeguard the integrity of the text, and to let persons know that serious matters about the Bible were not in doubt. Those on the cutting edge of this exciting and attention-getting scholarly work, however, were not always eager to work slowly, carefully, deliberately, and intelligently with the top leadership in the church. They often acted alone in this sense (though not without the help of, for example, the state and the academy), and, at the very least, fueled the impression of a conspiracy among the orthodox (often maligned as “dead” or “Pharisaical”) to hide the “many errors and corruptions” of the biblical text.[viii]
In response, the orthodox leadership could hardly be blamed for seeing something dark in the critical scholar’s work from the beginning (unfortunately, the attempts to “call out” the irreverent – and sometimes downright impudent – critical scholars and their pietistic allies may have, at times, been both too weak and rather ham-fisted). This, it seemed, was something altogether different from the kind of textual criticism the earliest of the church fathers themselves admitted to openly – after all, before the church as a whole (i.e. the leadership), thankfully, had the means to “first, [when doing biblical interpretation] correct your copy of the text” (as Augustine had said), it was these individual Christians who had to make decisions regarding the various variant manuscripts they were aware of.
Lutheran saint Kurt Marquart: “Man is not an objective super-observer in the universe, but a condemned sinner with a vested interest in escape.” And here, Satan urges a long, “frog-in-kettle” game.
So again – none of this means that Christians should be opposed to scholarship per se (see more thoughts on scholarship vis a vis Christianity here). On the contrary, I think all of this comes down to not respecting authority. Of God, the Bible, and the Church.[ix]
Again, didn’t Jesus Christ and His apostles quote the commonly used text of their day – the Torah that people actually had – as God’s inspired Word? As Charles Wiese points out: “We…have evidence of a variety of different textual traditions that pop up in the New Testament. Most of the time, Jesus and the Apostles don’t quote from the textual tradition behind the Hebrew Masoretic text but the tradition stands behind the LXX.” How does this compare with the church’s approach today, where it seems the decisions of an editorial committee in Muenster (home of Nestle-Aland 28, the “standard text” of Christendom) are of inevitable authority for us and our theology?!
In short, the kind of approach advocated in even the most conservative Christian colleges and seminaries is tremendously lacking. It is an atomized individualism – regarding persons, texts, and churches – that is on display in spades. In matters as simple as receiving the Scriptures to the matter of corporate worship, there is no respect shown to the authority of those above one’s self – and so there is also no mutual submission of the brethren to one another.
No thanks. I, for one, will buck this trend and say:
“I will receive in humble and grateful child-like trust what is given unless there is something really off like the glaring Comma Johanneum (even this was not in the earlier editions of Erasmus’ text, and hence is not in Luther’s German Bible). To say the very least, there is no need to give any kind of false impression that the church has anything to be hiding or has been hiding anything when it comes to God’s word.”[x]
Please challenge me on this. Attempt to educate and inform me, and if you suspect I am unteachable, try to do that for others.
[i] The author of this treatise, erstwhile master’s degree student Ernst Boogert, says at one point: “Truth may and should be questioned, because by testing it, it is strengthened.” (p. 63) My own view on this is a bit more nuanced: it is indeed possible, through God’s providential care, that truth can be strengthened in the act of questioning – but that this is not necessarily the case. In fact, depending on our attitude towards the things of God, I submit that sometimes received truth should not be questioned, even if God might use unwarranted skepticism for good (more on this in the broader piece above).
“It is not enough to say that historical criticism means ‘discriminating appreciation.’ The historian,’ says [David] Lotz, ‘must cross-examine, test, weigh, probe and analyze all written records of the past. If he fails to do this he de facto surrenders his claim to the title of historian!’” (Marquart, Kurt; quoting from a May 1975 issue of Forum Letter, in his Anatomy of an Explosion: Missouri in Lutheran Perspective, p. 114,italics mine). I note that view/attitude well. Evidently, we can’t seek to learn more about history simply because we are curious to do so. Of course questions will come, but no one can question absolutely everything about their own history or history more widely conceived.
With all of that said, I believe that my own view comports quite well with Boogert’s recent and rather detailed study (again available here) that seeks to constructively address and overcome the impasse that currently exists between CT and MT (Byzantine) advocates. Elsewhere, in his study he writes: “Both Byzantine protagonists and eclectics need to take time for careful analyses of each other’s arguments. This thesis provides a wealth of arguments that need consideration and reinvestigation.” (p. 63)
[ii] Ernst Boogert again (see above endnote): “…theological notions like providence and preservation need to be connected with the content of the New Testament and not with the letter. In that sense, the New Testament is historically and theologically fully preserved.” (p. 66)
[iii] Numbers can wow us to be sure. They might even tempt us with their perceived usefulness. As my pastor put it: “There are a little over 3.5 million letters in the Bible (3,566,480). In that most textual variants have to do with letters, even if the “mistakes” or “conflicts” are determined to be in the thousands, that is still, simply statistically, insignificant. There are 783, 137 words in the Bible. The same could be said about them. Overall agreement between the RT, MT and CT seems to be about 99.5%. So for a book that is from 2000-3500 years old, and copied by hand for much of its existence, that is simply amazing.”
[iv] In other words, I believe that the actions of the church authorities in this case were certainly God-inspired acts of love for good of – and order of – the one church.
From this it simply follows: Those who don’t think this results in an infallible and inerrant text should, at the very least, point out how reliable and firm it is! And this should be, if they desire to be friends of God and His people, their constant public refrain.
Again, recognizing that there are variant traditions, deriving from various schools and centers of Christian influence should not change any of this.
[v] A line from the 2003 movie Luther comes to mind. In it, Martin Luther jests: “the priests assured me that by gazing at sacred relics, I could cut down my time in purgatory. Luckily for me, Rome has enough nails from the holy cross to shoe every horse in Saxony… but there are relics elsewhere in Christendom. Eighteen out of twelve apostles are buried in Spain…” see here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309820/quotes
[vi] And to be honest, I think that after a while, the 16th century reformer Martin Luther realized, for example, that he should just shut up about his misgivings about the book of James, Hebrews, and Revelation, for example. I suspect that as a good churchman, he recognized it was enough to say what some in the early church said: these books were received as canon, but, since some orthodox persons spoke against their inclusion in the canon, should not be used to determine any doctrine.
[vii] An Eastern Orthodox Christian, Rod Dreher, has expressed this responsibility well: “
“…what I can tell definitively about Orthodox Christian doctrine would be about one-third of the length of my big long Dante blog post yesterday. But I trust the guides who know the territory. I don’t need to know how to read maps to trust them to lead me out of the dark wood. Moreover, I don’t have to worry that there’s a big fight among the guide corps over whether or not the maps and the methods of map-reading have anything true to tell us about where we are in the world, and what we need to do if we are to get out of the dark wood.” (Does Doctrine Even Matter To Liberal Catholics?)
[viii] Those of a more pietist bent, eager to distinguish themselves from the orthodox, also promoted their work.
[ix] Today, we see this in full flower with “progressive religion” and its counterpart tendencies: radical social justice warring, identity politics, and the denial of truth and fact (see here, for example).
Should we not be utterly amazed at how not only do none of these variants affect doctrine, but none of these variants can be said to necessarily contradict one another at all?!
As church historian Martin Noland has pointed out (from a private email correspondence, shared with permission): “The textual variants in the New Testament only become a big deal when anti-Christian polemicists blow their significance way out of proportion. This happened first in the Deist controversies in the 18th century; and has been resurrected by Bart Ehrmann today, to his great financial and career profit.”
16th c. altar painting in St. Mary’s Church in Wittenberg, Germany (by Cranach). The panels show the four primary ways Christ’s word of forgiveness comes to us: Holy Baptism, Lord’s Supper, Office of the Keys, and Preaching.
In just a couple of years, the 500-year anniversary of Martin Luther’s putting forth the 95 theses – which launched what is called the Reformation – will be upon us.
As we Lutherans like to say, if Luther’s actions – and those who adhered to his teaching – were rebellious in any sense, it was a peculiar kind of rebellion. These were, as Jaroslav Pelikan put it, “obedient rebels”. Their reformation was, according to 19th c. Lutheran theologian Charles Porterfield Krauth, a “Conservative Reformation”.[i]
As evidence for this claim, we can look at how these early “Protestants” (see here for why I have that in quotes) “did church”. What is particularly interesting is their conviction that it was necessary to preserve all that was good from the church’s history. The Lutherans, in particular, wanted to keep those things that highlighted the Gospel in its narrow sense – the message of Christ crucified for our forgiveness, life and salvation from sin, death, and the devil (see I Cor. 15).
Several of the 16th c. Protestant Reformers largely retained the liturgical forms and words used in the church’s traditional worship service – even as several with more radical tendencies “purged” the churches of images. Here, as a Lutheran, I am keen to emphasize that the services of the Lutheran reformers not only basically looked and sounded the same as those of the Roman Catholic Church, but also that they did not see themselves as innovators in any sense of the word – “re-imagining church” in this or that way.[ii]
In fact, over and against their Roman Catholic opponents, the claim of these “first evangelicals” was that their teachings truly were “holy, catholic and apostolic”: “the churches among us do not dissent from the catholic church in any article of faith”, they said.[iii] If this is indeed true, it would be a very “conservative Reformation” indeed!
Using quotes from the 1580 Lutheran Book of Concord (which confessional Lutherans subscribe to) and other sources, let’s quickly look at six aspects of their worship: Preaching, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Confession and Absolution, Liturgy and ceremonies, the Church Year, and Church Discipline.
Preaching:
For Protestants, preaching has always been a primary component of the church’s life together. Two of the main contributors to the Lutheran “Book of Concord,” Martin Chemnitz and Jacob Andreae gave a clear explanation of what sermons should be all about “in our Lutheran congregations”:
“Preachers should be diligent not to preach in generalities, but always to arrange the material according to these parts: sin; God’s wrath and punishment of sin; contrition, remorse, anxiety of the conscience, etc.; the resolve to abandon and avoid sin; the person of Christ; His office and merit; God’s grace; the forgiveness of sin; faith; the good fruits of faith, such as the good resolve to do better, good works, patience in suffering, etc. This is done so that in the sermons, the teaching may always have its application or accommodation to use, as the doctrine should be used in the best way.”
Incidentally, this kind concern for doctrine’s application/use is what encourages Pastor Cooper to ask the kinds of penetrating questions that he does about the pastoral implications of John Piper’s theology of justification. And as for debates among Lutherans themselves, it is true that Confessional Lutherans today are debating about just what sermons should look like[iv], but, not insignificantly, all of them do agree that “the Gospel [that is, the message of Christ crucified for our continual forgiveness, life, and salvation] should predominate!” The church is where Christ’s little lambs gather to hear the good voice of their shepherd. Generally speaking, if you are going away from sermons feeling guilty and uncertain as your status as a Christian, you are missing what God intends preaching to be.
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper:
Philip Melanchton pictured as baptizing.
Regarding baptism, Lutherans have always upheld with the ancient church that baptism – water combined with God’s word of promise – regenerates and brings men and women into Christ’s church. This is true even for the youngest among us (see Pastor Cooper’s very helpful short Bible study on baptism and his three-part response to James White).
Further, also unlike most other Protestants, Lutherans have also vigorously upheld the importance of the Lord’s Supper as a means of God’s grace whereby He visits His people in love and forgiveness (see this helpful short Bible study on the Lord’s Supper from Pastor Cooper). In this sacrament, God’s gracious presence in His true body and blood gives us not only the assurance of His forgiveness, but His forgiveness in fact.
As the Lutheran reformer Philip Melanchton put it in the Book of Concord[v], “we defend the doctrine received in the entire Church, that in the Lord’s Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, and are truly tendered with those things which are seen, bread and wine. And we speak of the presence of the living Christ [living body]; for we know that death hath no more dominion over Him.” (for more on the early church and the Lord’s Supper see here).
Luther, in his disguise as “Junker Jorge”, at the Last Supper. He is being handed the cup.
And as he put it later on, in language that might shock many of us today[vi], “We do not abolish the Mass, but religiously keep and defend it. Masses are celebrated among us every Lord’s Day and on the other festivals. The Sacrament is offered to those who wish to use it, after they have been examined and absolved.”
Confession and Absolution:
“It is taught among us that private absolution should be retained in the churches and not be allowed to fall into disuse” says Melanchton.[vii] In Confessional Lutheran churches today one will find not only this comforting practice retained, but also find a corporate confession and absolution at the beginning of the service.
In spite of very clear passages found in Matthew 16, 18, and John 20 which deal with just this issue, some Christians are simply scandalized by confession and absolution for all kinds of reasons (for example, “how can a pastor forgive sins?!”), but as I wrote in a previous post:
“Lutherans[, unlike other Protestants,] insist that the Christian faith cannot be based on the individual and his relationship with God. If it were, then in effect there could be no other person who could in real confidence tell you, in your time of despair, that Christ really does forgive and save even you. In other words, they are not only saying to you that “good works are not necessary for salvation” (listen to this podcast by Jordan Cooper on Mark Jone’s book about antinomianism) but that the appropriation of Christian faith does not ultimately depend on you, the naked individual before God.
Rather, it is given [see this post from Pastor Cooper on the “covenant of works” (updated from original post)]. Therefore, we even have pastors – irreplaceable in the church’s structure – who as God’s officially appointed representatives can bring true comfort to even the most authority-minded person:
‘Almighty God in His mercy has given His Son to die for you and for His sake forgives you all your sins. As a called and ordained servant of the Word, I therefore forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’[viii]“
Liturgy and Ceremonies:
Right after talking about how the Mass and Sacrament are retained in the Lutheran Churches, Melanchton went on to write: “And the usual public ceremonies are observed, the series of lessons, of prayers, vestments, and other such things”.[ix] In his book, Heaven on Earth, Arthur Just says that it is not ritual that is dead; rather, it is we who are dead (insofar as we are sinners, this is evidence of the original sin, which remains in us). What is in mind here is the primacy of the life-giving word of God (the lessons), “at work in you believers” (I Thes. 2:13), and the universal church’s response to that word (the prayers).
Further, from the book of Revelation, one can see that even the multi-cultural worship in heaven includes many liturgical features, which all participate in together. And regarding the broad matter of church ritual, Pastor Holger Sonntag helpfully writes:
“After the end of the comprehensive ceremonial law of the OT, Christians are free to add humanly devised ceremonies (“adiaphora”)[x] to the ceremonies of the gospel Christ has established already [i.e. baptism and the Lord’s Supper, administered by a pastor]. Lest these ceremonies contradict the ceremonies of the gospel itself, they must conform to the gospel in both content and form. This means, they need to proclaim the gospel and be humble and simple in nature. By doing so, they agree with the Christian faith (doctrine) and further faith in Christ as the highest worship. By doing so, they also agree with the simplicity of worship in paradise before man’s fall into sin.” (see here for more)
“Historically, the church had its own calendar. It actually adopted a way of keeping time that signaled that the people of God, in a way, inhabit the world differently.” Smith further noted that practices like Advent, Epiphany, Lent, etc. are actually able to help form us as Christians in largely unconscious ways (something he notes is also true of the many “secular liturgies” that we participate in – the mall, the academy, sports).
A picture of Bugenhagen (Luther’s pastor and confessor) administering the “office of the keys”. The impenitent man’s hands are bound with a cord.
Versus pastors who would just “do their own thing” every week, the church year is meant to expose Christians to the “whole counsel of God” every year, even as the message of “Christ crucified” is the overriding theme. As Lutheran pastor Dr. Arthur Just says, exposing the heart of the matter: “The Church year exists for the sole reason of centering the Church’s life in the life of Christ and proclaiming that the historic reality that ‘Jesus died’ is now the sacramental reality that ‘Jesus died for you.’”
Church Discipline:
Churches in America often seem to be in competition with one another today, and therefore administering church discipline often seems an impossible task (as there is always a church eager to receive a new member). An added difficulty is the very real possibility of unjust discipline or excommunication, perhaps administered by persons of questionable authority. As Martin Luther himself was excommunicated from the church and declared a heretic, the Lutheran churches of the Reformation certainly shared this second concern.
That said, in the Lutheran Confessional writings, Martin Luther wrote that proper excommunication “excludes those who are manifest and impenitent sinners from the sacrament and other fellowship of the church until they mend their ways and avoid sin.” (SA III, ix) For the Lutherans, the goal of excommunication was like that of the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians, chapter 5: that such impenitent sinners be “absolve[d]… if they are converted and ask for absolution.”[xi] Presupposed, of course, is a loving heart that longs for reconciliation with the lost coin, lost sheep, and lost son (Luke 15).
When it comes to granting mercy and grace, the church imitates her Lord. As Hebrews 4:15 says: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin…” (emphasis mine). In practice, this means that the church should humbly (see Gal. 6:1) call sin “sin”, make it easy for the guilty to confess, and keep appropriate consequences[xii] while speaking well of those brothers and sisters in Christ who repent.
“Dr. Donald Fortson related the following metaphor for understanding the different groups within the Reformation, which I thought was very helpful.
We all have a “top dresser drawer” into which we throw everything that there’s no other place for. Over time, it just gets full of all different kinds of things.
In church history, “tradition” kind of filled up the way that drawer does. And there were four different ways that the Reformers dealt with that drawer.
The Lutherans went through the drawer, looking for things that weren’t Biblical. Lutheranism took out the things that weren’t biblical, but they left everything else in there.
The Reformed took the drawer and dumped everything out on the bed. Then they went through all that stuff, checked it over carefully, and put back the things that were Biblical.
The Anglicans opened the drawer and took out one thing, called “the Pope,” and put back in one other thing, called “the Archbishop of Canterbury.” (He acknowledged that this was probably the least analogous part of the metaphor, given the 39 articles and all.)
The Anabaptists took out the whole drawer, dumped everything in the trash, and lit the trash can on fire.”
[iii] Phillip Melanchthon, in the Augsburg Confession.
Lutherans meant for that Augsburg Confession to be a confession of the universal (“catholic” with a small “c”) church. Unfortunately, it was not to be the case: it was disputed by Rome (and other new Protestants) and more confessional documents followed.
[iv]This smart post from Trent Demerest does a nice job of laying out the debate in a thorough and light-hearted way.
[v] Apology to the Augsburg Confession, X, “of the Holy Supper”.
[vi] In Apology, Article XXIV, “The Mass”. In a later Confessional document called the Smalcald Articles (written by Luther), the Roman Catholic interpretation of the word mass was directly countered. For example, “since the Mass is nothing else and can be nothing else (as the Canon and all books declare), than a work of men (even of wicked scoundrels), by which one attempts to reconcile himself and others to God, and to obtain and merit the remission of sins and grace (for thus the Mass is observed when it is observed at the very best; otherwise what purpose would it serve?), for this very reason it must and should [certainly] be condemned and rejected. For this directly conflicts with the chief article, which says that it is not a wicked or a godly hireling of the Mass with his own work, but the Lamb of God and the Son of God, that taketh away our sins.” (italics mine)
[viii] “To even the most authority-minded persons” – yes, that would be Martin Luther, as I argued in my series “The Coming Vindication of Martin Luther”. Luther realized that this kind of thing needed to happen in institutional of Christ’s church, where the means of grace were to be delivered in all of their richness: the regular preaching of the Word and the administration of baptism and the Supper (see here if you are Reformed) – really and truly for forgiveness, life and salvation.
[ix] I recently read an article from Pastor Jordan McKinely in which he said the following: “Dr. Naomichi Masaki of the [LCMS’s] Fort Wayne seminary asked the question in one of my classes, ‘Whose liturgy is it?’ If it’s about preference, it’s yours and mine to do as we see fit. If it’s the church’s liturgy as it has developed from the time of the Apostles (Acts 2:42)–and even from the time of the Old Testament prophets (Psalmody, anyone?), we really should show greater restraint in changing what is done. After all, don’t we say in the creed, ‘I believe in one, holy, Christian [catholic] and apostolic church?’ The liturgy is the possession of the whole church. Who am I to exercise my preference in the matter? Yes, it has room to shrink, grow, or change, but it shouldn’t be based on preference. I suppose I don’t get much of a voice because I’m white and married to a German (being of Scottish heritage doesn’t gain me any points, does it?), it’s going to sound like I’m advocating an emotionless, Germanic traditionalism. You don’t have to listen to me, but you should listen to Dr. Masaki, who isn’t German, nor is he emotionless.” (see here)
[x] Here are some more thoughts about the matter of “adiaphora”, from the current LC-MS President Matthew Harrison: “….we note an unpublished study conducted in the early 1990s by Pr. Brian Saunders, formerly of Holy Cross Lutheran in Ft. Wayne. Pr. Saunders surveyed some 300 who regularly attended a “contemporary worship” service at Holy Cross (with rock band, testimonies, “liturgical” dance, etc…). One question asked: If you were to move to another community where there was a church which did not confess the true bodily presence of Christ in the Sacrament, nor baptize babies, but did worship in the way you do now; and there was an LC-MS congregation which used the liturgy/hymnal, which church would you join? 74% said they would opt out of Lutheranism. It has been said that historical-critical theology is merely a way for unbelievers to find haven in the church. I would suggest that much of “contemporary worship” is simply a way for the weak to be robbed of Lutheranism, yet remain within the Lutheran church.” (Matthew Harrison, “Martin Chemnitz and FC X,” in Mysteria Dei: Essays in Honor Kurt Marquart, ed., Paul McCain and John Stephenson (Fort Wayne: Concordia Theological Seminary Press, 1999), 98-99, n. 31., quoted here).
[xi] See Ap XXVIII. 13-14 ; also see Treatise [the Tractate on the Power and Primacy of the Pope], 74. Regarding re-conversion, the Lutheran confessions say: “But when the baptized have acted against their conscience, allowed sin to rule in them, and thus have grieved and lost the Holy Ghost in them, they need not be rebaptized, but must be converted again, as has been sufficiently said before.” (In the Formula of Concord, Article II, under “Free Will, or Human Powers” [see paragraph 69]) Also see my post: Judging Jesus stye?: the real reasons for discipline in the church.
A recent and careful re-evaluation of the roots of liberal theology – by a highly regarded liberal theologian.
“The Holy Spirit is no skeptic…. a man must delight in assertions or he will be no Christian.” — Martin Luther to Erasmus
Post by Nathan Rinne
Recently, in an interesting First Thoughts piece on the current debates about Karl Barth, the name of Immanuel Kant was invoked.
The author of the article, Philip Cary, stated that for Kant: “The intelligibility of the world lies not in the substance of things [i.e. “their formal being or essence”] but in the a priori categories imposed on it by our active, conceptualizing minds.” As Cary states, Kant came up with this idea because “we have no intellectual faculty for knowing the essence of things in themselves.” (to have Kant’s view explained in some detail in layman’s terms, give this fine podcast a listen)*
On one level, I submit that Immanuel Kant’s fight was real: for him, he was fighting to preserve the reality of free will for humans vs what he saw as the reductionism and determinism of the natural sciences (a focus of mine to), whose clout was increasing due to piling up success after unending experimental (and practical!) success. And yet, whether he intended to do so or not, Kant created a system of thought where there was no need for Divine revelation – where Divine revelation was something that could just be “tacked on”, but didn’t really fit into the overall picture. In this sense, he was not all that different than any other philosopher who has come to capture the hearts and minds of elite men and women (I also find it fascinating that he was evidently sufficiently vague [British: “shifty”] that scholars today actually argue over whether he was atheistic, theistic, panentheistic, or pantheistic, but I’ll leave that important observation alone for now). And to say this, of course, is not to insist that he may not have had some good ideas, (“denying knowledge to make room for faith”, and saying that the “world of appearances”, or “phenomena”, counted as knowledge were not these…) gotten some things right, etc. – only that his focus was not where it should have been (see Acts 17 to get some focus).
Cary’s piece put me in mind of something I had read recently in liberal theologian Gary Dorrein’s recent and ambitious revisionist work Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: the Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology.
Dorrein begins by speaking about classical political liberalism (all bold are mine):
Historically and theoretically, the cornerstone of liberalism is the assertion of the supreme value and universal rights of the individual. The liberal tradition of Benedict de Spinoza, John Locke, Charles Louis de Sceondat Motesquieu, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson taught that the universal goal of human beings is to realize their freedom and that state power is justified only to the extent that it enables and protects individual liberty….
Kant et al losing this plot..: “when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me” and “this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent…”
…and then goes on to say about liberal theology:
The founding of modern theology is an aspect of this story. Liberal theology, in my definition, was and is a three-layered phenomenon: Firstly it is the idea that all claims to truth, in theology and other disciplines, must be made on the basis of reason and experience, not by appeal to external authority. From a liberal standpoint, Christian scripture or ecclesiastical doctrine may still be authoritative for theology and faith, but its authority operates within Christian experience, not as an outside word that establishes or compels truth claims about particular matters of fact.
Secondly, liberal theology argues for the viability and necessity of an alternative to orthodox over-belief and secular disbelief. In Germany, the liberal movement called itself “mediating theology” because it took so seriously the challenge of a rising culture of aggressive deism and atheism. Liberal religious thinkers, unavoidably, had to battle with conservatives for the right to liberalize Christian doctrine. But usually they worried more about the critical challenges to belief from outsiders. The agenda of modern theology was to develop a credible form of Christianity before the “cultured despisers of religion” routed Christian faith from intellectual and cultural respectability. This agenda was expressed in the title of the founding work of modern theology, Schleiermacher’s Uber die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verachtern (On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers). Here, Britain was ahead of the curve, as there was an ample tradition of aggressive British deism and skepticism by the time that Schleiermacher wrote. British critics ransacked the Bible for unbelievable things: in Germany, a deceased anonymous deist (Hermann Samuel Reimarus) caused a stir in the mid-1770s by portraying Jesus as a misguided political messiah lacking any idea of being divine; Schleiermacher, surrounded by cultured scoffers in Berlin, contended that true religion and the divinity of Jesus were fully credible on modern terms.
The third layer consists of specific things that go with overthrowing the principle of external authority and adopting a mediating perspective between authority religion and disbelief. The liberal tradition reconceptualizes the meaning of Christianity in the light of modern knowledge and values. It is reformist in spirit and substance, not revolutionary. It is open to the verdicts of modern intellectual inquiry, especially historical criticism and the natural sciences. It conceives Christianity as an ethical way of life, it advocates moral concepts of atonement and reconciliation, and it is committed to making progressive religion credible and socially relevant.
This definition is calibrated to describe the entire tradition of liberal theology from Kant and Schleiermacher to the present day….. The key to the ascendency of liberal theology in the nineteenth century is that it outgrew its origins as an ideology of freethinking criticism to become a theology in, and at home with, the Christian church. (pp. 4-5, 6).
Bayer (“Christian theology is… regarded as theinterpretation of this speech act between the justifying God and the justified sinner”) vs. Vilmar (“The knowledge of God which calls itself theology is at the same time a speaking from God.”)
Of course, this is where traditional orthodox theologians must disagree with Dorrien, however right his diagnosis to this point. This goes back to the main argument of J. Gresham Machen, who asserted – rightly, I think – that liberal Christianity and biblical Christianity were two different religions. Theologically freethinking criticism and the Household of God don’t really go together (I think the late confessional Lutheran theologian Kurt Marquart had a deep grasp of the issues, and made this argument quite effectively – see here).
The difference, of course, is that the biblical theologian stands with the earliest theologians of the Christian church: he states that the very Word of God, as put forth in the written Scriptures, is true, and that it speaks of purposeful, discernible realities that exist outside of us. This makes it relevant and incapable of becoming irrelevant – whatever the “Spirit of the Age” may think – and all else follows from this simple point.
And not only this, but Christians are those who make assertions not only about what is true about God and man, but the rest of His creation and the personal intentions discerned within. This means, among other things, that ancient metaphysical ideas of “substance”, for example, align more closely with the teachings of the Bible*** than does the Kantian alternative, still in vogue today in a myriad of different forms (underlying a whole spectrum of “mediating theologies”). To say this does not mean that man can, with or without the Scriptures, accurately discern and assert the intrinsic purposes of all the things in the cosmos. It does mean however, that even without taking the Scriptures to be God’s word, man is able to accurately discern and assert some of the intrinsic purposes of some of the things within it (which should not be surprising, since the latest and greatest theories of smarter skeptics are moving in this direction anyways, as I pointed out in the last post on my personal blog here).
After all, as the Psalms say repeatedly: “the fool says in his heart: ‘there is no God'”. And as Paul writes “[the] divine nature… [has] been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Even if one thinks that Paul is only talking about conclusions made from the deductions of our sensory experience or that he only says this by virtue of our having innate knowledge due to our “intellectual apparatus” (in Kantian terms, “synthetic apriori” stuff, the “metaphysic of experience”), Kant (we can have “strong convictions” about but not knowledge of free will, morals, rational agency, good and evil, the soul, God, etc.) gets decidedly left behind by these revealed assertions of God through His apostle – and some classical philosophers, on the other hand,**** perhaps get our grudging respect…
FIN
Notes
* More from that quote:
“It is not the mark of a Christian mind to take no delight in assertions. On the contrary, a man must delight in assertions or he will be no Christian.
And by assertion– in order that we may not be misled by words– I mean a constant adhering, affirming, confessing, maintaining, and an invincible persevering. Nor, I think, does the word mean anything else either as used by the Latins or by us in our time.
I am speaking, moreover, about the assertion of those things which have been divinely transmitted to us in the sacred writings… Nothing is better known or more common among Christians than assertion. Take away assertions and you take away Christianity.”
–Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, Eds. E. Gordon Rupp and Philip Watson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), 105-106.
** Cary goes on: “*But we can make scientific sense of the world because its conceptual structure and intelligibility come from us, from the activity of our minds as we conceptualize the data of our sense experience”
*** While most all of modern academia shuns notions of essence/substance, a notable exception is this quote from Hans Ulrich Bumbrecht, professor of Romance languages at Stanford University, from his 2004 book “Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey”:
What I want to say….is that there is probably no way to end the exclusive dominance of interpretation, to abandon hermeneutics… in the humanities without using concepts that potential intellectual opponents may polemically characterize as “substantialist,” that is concepts such as “substance” itself, “presence,” and perhaps even “reality” and “Being”. To use such concepts, however, has long been a symptom of despicably bad intellectual taste in the humanities; indeed, to believe in the possibility of referring to the world other than by meaning has become anonymous with the utmost degree of philosophical naivete – and until recently, few humanists have been courageous enough to deliberately draw such potentially devastating and embarrassing criticism upon themselves. We all know only too well that saying whatever it takes to confute the charge of being “substantialist” is the humanities on autopilot (bold mine, quoted in Armin Wenz, Biblical Hermeneutics in a Postmodern World: Sacramental Hermeneutics versus Spiritualistic Constructivism, LOGIA, 2013)
As I noted in the past: “In other words, almost no one today in the academic world is a “substantialist”, or we might say “essentialist” – to suggest that there are things in the cosmos that have firm categories of being, or essence, or substance, is anathema, for the universe is in flux. To suggest that some of these things have an objective meaning or purpose we can discern takes even greater hutzpa. Now, it is likely that some in the fields of the humanities see what has become their arch-nemesis, science, as being “essentialist”, however one notes the primacy (and difficulty) of interpretation in the modern sciences as well:to speak of essences is to speak of atomic particles, and not things we regularly see and experience in the cosmos, like males and females, and marriages and children, for example. More importantly, the particles and assemblies of particles might “mean something” in a purely material sense – showing themselves to have a certain order and predictability – but a greater purpose in those things that contain them can only be a total mystery (I talked about the despair this creates here).”
**** Very interesting and helpful listening on Aristotle’s notion of the four causes: http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/aristotle-four-causes
A friend on Facebook asked one of those questions that many Christians of goodwill wrestle with. Though the church body in question for him is the Roman Catholic Church, one might easily wonder the same thing about any heterodox group. Here’s his question:
[A]re Roman Catholics Christians? If Justification is the chief doctrine, and they flat out deny it, are they not unbelievers? Just because they mention the name Jesus, along with Mary and the Saints, does that make them Christians? I’m uncertain on this point, for if the Pope be antichrist, what are those who follow him?
What follows here is an assortment of quotations from people whose opinions on this question I have ample cause to respect.
Starting off, here’s Dr. Luther:
The church is universal throughout the world, wherever the Gospel of God and the sacraments are present. Although the city of Rome is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, nevertheless there remain in it Baptism, the Sacrament, the voice and text of the Gospel, the Sacred Scriptures, the ministries, the name of Christ, and the name of God. Whoever has these, has them; whoever does not have them, has no excuse, for the treasure is still there. Therefore the Church of Rome is holy, because it has the holy name of God, the Gospel, Baptism, etc. If these are present among a people, that people is called holy. Thus this Wittenberg of ours is a holy village, and we are truly holy, because we have been baptized, communed, taught, and called by God; we have the works of God among us, that is, the Word and the sacraments, and these make us holy. … [E]ven though the Galatians had been led astray, Baptism, the Word, and the name of Christ still continued among them. Besides, there were still some good men who had not defected from Paul’s doctrine and who had a proper understanding of the Word and the sacraments, which could not be defiled by those who did rebel. For Baptism, the Gospel, etc., do not become unholy because I am defiled and unholy and have a false understanding of them. On the contrary, they remain holy and exactly what they were, regardless of whether they are among the godly or the ungodly; men can neither defile them nor hallow them. By our good or evil behavior, by our good or evil life and morals, they are defiled or hallowed in the sight of the Gentiles (Rom. 2:24) but not in the sight of God. Therefore the church is holy even where the fanatics are dominant, so long as they do not deny the Word and the sacraments; if they deny these, they are no longer the church. Wherever the substance of the Word and the sacraments abides, therefore, there the holy church is present, even though Antichrist may reign there; for he takes his seat not in a stable of fiends or in a pigpen or in a congregation of unbelievers but in the highest and holiest place possible, namely, in the temple of God (2 Thess. 2:4). Thus our brief answer to this question is this: The church is universal throughout the world, wherever the Gospel of God and the sacraments are present. The Jews, the Turks, and the fanatics are not the church, because they oppose and deny these things.” (Blessed Martin Luther; Luther’s Works, AE; Vol. 26:24-26) (Emphases mine. —TDD)
When I asked my spiritual director, Fr. Charles L. McClean, about this portion of Luther’s Works, he had this to say:
In his Lectures on Galatians (AE 26:25f) Luther seems to say that, unlike the Roman Church where Antichrist has his seat, the “fanatics” have so rejected the Gospel and Sacraments that they are simply outside the Church of God. I cannot recall any passage in the Lutheran Confessions which explicitly teaches this.
On the one hand, we know with certainty where the Church is: wherever through (as much of) the Gospel and Sacraments (as somehow survive) God creates faith in human hearts when and where it pleases Him. On the other hand, we cannot know with certainty where the Church is not. And I would raise the question: Is it necessary for us to know where the Church is not? Is it not a kind of causa irrealis? And do we not in charity presume that where human beings are baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, there the Church is being gathered?
I also cannot help but wonder if ‘unchurching’ professing Christian bodies is not in fact a kind of spiritual illness. (It reminds me very much of that other in my judgment spiritual illness when people are so eager—and even delighted!—to declare who is in fact in hell!) We obviously cannot have communicatio in sacris with heterodox churches but that is an entirely different question. It seems to me that where the Church is is God’s business not ours.
I think this question belongs to those questions which can never be answered definitely in this present world. Or so it seems to me. (Emphasis mine. —TDD)
And in another email:
There is of course the question of how confessional Lutherans should regard and relate to the Church of Rome. The attached Reformation Day sermon pretty well expresses my own heart-felt convictions. I think Dr. Sasse provides an example for us. In later life he met and carried on a correspondence with the great Jesuit biblical scholar, Augustin Cardinal Bea, who among other things was father confessor to Pope Pius XII. Of this I am convinced: we dare not look on the troubles of the Roman Church with a kind of Schadenfreude but rather with deep sympathy and compassion for fellow Christians in their difficulties and sorrows—as we would hope that our fellow Christians would look on our own! After his first meeting with Cardinal Bea, Sasse said that he and the Cardinal were of one mind in this: that we are all like the disciples in the boat on the storm-tossed sea praying “Lord, save us!” Sasse always speaks of the “tragedy” of the Roman Church. There can only be tragedy where there is in fact goodness and greatness! There can obviously be no communicatio in sacris with the Roman Church, but we can and should certainly ‘speak the truth in love’ (Eph.4:15) That means (among other things) the avoidance of language that unnecessarily wounds them, an effort to truly to understand them, and an effort to present the truth we confess in all humility and charity. And as Franz Pieper and Kurt Marquart among others have pointed out: despite any confusions in our carnal minds about matters of doctrine “all Christians believe in justification by faith.” In his volume Eschatology Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “What actually saves is the full assent of faith” (p.231).
Moreover, the One Lord is indivisible; if we have Him at all, we have Him wholly and altogether. And since faith is no mere human conviction, but is in every case the work and gift of the Spirit of Truth (St. John 16:13), this same Spirit-wrought faith is exactly the same in every believer’s heart—whatever the contradictions in his fleshly mind or in the doctrine of his heterodox church! This means that every Trinitarian Font, whatever its other entanglements, offers and bestows in the One Baptism the One Lord and His One Faith – no more and no less by divine institution—if it offers the Lord’s Baptism at all. (“The Shape and Foundation of Faith”; a lecture given at Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, on Jauary 20, 1999) (Emphasis mine. —TDD)
Is a man justified by his fiducia and assensus to the doctrine of justification by faith? No, he is saved by grace through faith in Christ. Who among us has a perfect faith? No one. Who among us has a perfect Christ? All who trust in His mercy. For faith simply receives the promised mercy. He who has faith at all has all the benefits of Christ whole and entire.
“If exegesis is to be practiced historico-critically, it must use the methods of secular historical science, i.e. criticism which allows only probability judgments, and the principles of analogy and correlation (cf. Troeltsch). Thereby it subjects itself in principle to secular-historical judgment” — theses presented for discussion in the University of Munich* (picture is of Ernst Troeltsch)
“[The distorted ideas of modernity] see man as his own god, and history either as man’s work or as a naturalism.” — p. 25, Bible as history, George Buttrick
Today I want to talk about historicism, with lots of help from the respected confessional Lutheran apologist and historian Dr. Martin Noland.
Over my last Christmas vacation, I tackled his PhD. Dissertation, Harnack’s historicism: the genesis, development, and institutionalization of historicism and its expression in the thought of Adolf Von Harnack (1996).** Right away I was hooked and intrigued with Dr. Noland’s ambitious work, because we share very common interests and he seemed to “fill in” many of the gaps that have existed in my own knowledge of topics such as these (see my own series on this topic “What Athens needs from Jerusalem”).
What follows is my own highlighting of key elements of Dr. Noland’s dissertation, along with some comments that aim to build on his very insightful observations and synthesis.
Be warned – what follows is admittedly some very dense and heady stuff – this can’t be avoided when talking about historicism! – but I am trying to make it understandable as best as I can, choosing the most helpful quotes and the like. At 360 pages, the dissertation covers a lot, and in order to not simplify the complexity too much, I have chosen to error on the side of going a bit too long myself.Here is a particularly helpful summation of Noland’s work by the man himself:
“In summary, historicism was both a worldview and a method. As a worldview, it was identified with anti-naturalist and post-speculative realist perspectives, emphasizing the themes of the malleability of human nature and individuality. As a method, it operated with the principles of criticism, analogy, correlation, development, and the historical idea.” (p. 83)
The “post-speculative realist perspective” talked about in that quote is a term that emphasizes a distinction between men like Hegel and the others who followed him that are usually considered to be historicists – Hegel was far more optimistic about man’s ability to speculate accurately about the future, given what he considered the discernible workings of the Spirit in the world. In his dissertation, Noland points out the Christian influences (particularly a strong notion of “divine providence”) on some of the first systematic thinkers in historicism – men who responded to and countered Hegel – particularly Ranke and Humboldt, and also says that the highly influential early 20th c. theologian Adolf Von Harnack was “closer to the early historicists… than Troeltsch may have realized” (p. 202, hence Von Harnack’s picture being in part I).
Who is Troeltsch? Pictured above, he is most well-known as a Christian historian of culture and religion, and the author of the famed work Die soziallehren der chrsitlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, which Noland says can be seen not primarily as a theological treatise, but “the epitome of historicist analysis of Western society at the highest level” (p. 213). So it is not surprising that Noland cites Troeltsch quite a bit in his dissertation, for the most part seeming to accept his analysis and synthesis as helpful (Noland’s own view is that Troeltsch himself should be classified as a historicist – he also told me that his views were affected by World War One and that he thinks Troeltsch can be considered a transition figure***). Again, what follows will summarize some key bits of Noland’s overall analysis.
With the overthrow of Aristotle, both good and bad things came.
First however, I will share some of my own comments – to set the wider context a bit more. With the advent of Descartes in the mid- 17th c., there is a fundamental shift in philosophy in the Western world – a shift that the great Lutheran theologian John Gerhard perhaps just caught the tail end of. Nevertheless – and I admit that I could be wrong about this – it seems to me that with Descartes we have an attempt to partially salvage Aristotle’s focus on certainties external to, or outside of, us – namely, their discernible essences – from the onslaught of Francis Bacon’s program (exemplified by a title riffing on Aristotle: the New Organon****), which in sum emphasized the importance of “what works”- technique (with extreme forms of nominalism being the inevitable result of this) via experimentation, systematic observation, and probabilities.
Rene “I think therefore I am” Descartes was not only a towering philosopher but also a mathematician and practicing scientist. His ideas, scientific and philosophical (in these days, these were seen as going together, science was philosophy) had an immediate influence. It would be then be other action-men like Blaise Pascal who would soon afterwards seem to further vindicate crucial aspects of both Bacon and Descartes’ approaches, what with his many experimental science and mathematical-invention successes. Newton would follow soon thereafter, lending even more credibility – immense credibility – to Bacon and Descartes. However, even in these days there were men who saw what was being missed in these approaches and endeavored to put forth their own viewpoints. Some indeed sensed that the Enlightenment efforts of men like Descartes (“the only things that can be proved, demonstrated, and verified beyond a doubt can be called ‘knowledge’”) and later, David Hume (there is a “fact-value split”) were, to say the least, “a bit off”.
Back to Dr. Noland’s dissertation: the key point in all of this, according to Troeltsch, is that for Descartes the question is no longer about ontology (“what is”) but rather the mind’s apprehension of reality, or “epistemology” (“an analysis of the contents of consciousness”, “what is known”).***** Descartes, according to Troeltsch, is a “naturalist” who looks at the world through the lens of quantity andregularity and seeks to “express everything by mathematical statements and to find constant mechanisms behind all phenomena. It conceptualizes these mechanisms in the forms of laws, based on observations of physical, social, or moral regularity.” Naturalism “looks at the world from the standpoint of physical entities and processes, even to the extreme point of explaining all human behavior and history physically” (Troeltsch, quoted in Noland, pp. 46 and 47).******
On the other hand, historicism, according to Troeltsch, is the great antithesis of naturalism.And Descarte’s great antithesis personified was an Italian writer by the name of Vico. According to Noland and those he cites (men like Isaiah Berlin, for example), we see the beginnings of this species of thought called historicism with him, who also introduced the notion of “mytho-poetical” truth – and how it could explain what had happened among the heathen (note: not Jewish and Christian) nations (p. 102). Like Descartes, Vico wanted to pursue “science” and “general laws” and so did not outrightly reject the scientific mindset like the historicists of the future would (“German thinkers steeped in pietism and mysticism”), who put their focus not only on organic ideas, like Vico, but individualities as well (p. 116). While Descartes rejected the “application of human ideas, such as ‘laws’ and ‘principles’, to the study of history, Vico argued that human history is, in fact, created precisely through such ideas, which are ‘modifications of the human mind’” (p. 108) – he “asserted the epistemological primacy of the man-made historical world” (Gadamer, in Noland p. 217).In Vico’s mind, methodological error was to be charged towards persons like Descartes, who “apply human ideas, such as ‘laws’ and ‘principles,’ to the study of nature, which was created by God and so is fully known by God alone” (p. 108)!
Noland sums up Troeltsch’s views on historicismby saying that while it to, like Descartes, was concerned with the “contents of consciousness” (the “cognito ergo sum” – i.e. vs. ontology, i.e. “what is”), it also…
“looks at the world from the standpoint of intellectual, spiritual, and psychological entities and processes, even to the extreme point of explaining all natural phenomena as a cultural growth. Unlike the model of Newtonian science, which posited the fixed nature of entities and the mathematical description of processes, historicism recognizes that entities change and develop over the course of time. Such change of an entity, requiring a historical account of its origin and growth, is thus the root issue dividing naturalism and historicism. (p. 47)”
In short, “what the Enlightenment [and its naturalism] attributed to nature and nature’s God… the historicists attributed to history and history’s God” (p. 143).
John Henry Newman, also emphasized the importance of probability when it comes to finding faith…
Troeltsch contends, Noland says, that “the empiricist category of ‘experience,’ with its anti-naturalist concentration on knowledge attained a posteriori, not least by immersion in the ‘stream of history,’… laid the foundations for the rise of historicism” (48-50). Noland also says that “criticism is not a chief, distinguishing principle of historicist thought” even though for the historicist, we note that actual historical events become all about probabilities (p. 59).
In addition, for the historicist, the notion of “correlation” (“there can be no change at one point without some preceding and consequent change elsewhere…. Everything is interconnected and each single event is related to all others” – Troeletsch, p. 64) replaces the naturalist’s “mechanical concepts of causation” (though ultimately “’culture’, i.e. [bildung], is the historicist’s causal principle”) and “all classical notions of ‘substance’ and ‘essence’ become obsolete” and “even the notion of ‘truth’ becomes subject to change” (italics mine, p. 103).******* Importantly, the past is not a “series of isolated, sporadic, and ultimately meaningless events”, but everything contributes to “development”, which “connotes some form of growth or improvement” (p. 69). Again, note that many of these ideas are either explicit or are implicit/tacit already within the writings of Vico, who can be called the “father of historicism”.
Martin Noland, on historicism: “all classical notions of ‘substance’ and ‘essence’ become obsolete” and “even the notion of ‘truth’ becomes subject to change.”
I would also note here that for the naturalist and historicist (throw in empiricist, rationalist, etc), the present becomes the key to the past (for the historicist, this means “empathetically” coming to understand human nature more and more now, in line with creating a “psychology of historical causes”, p. 64) even if this also means “thinking in terms of the totality” (where there are necessary internal factors and contingent external factors to consider – this key principle is known as the “historical idea” [p. 74]) and not simply in terms of accurately reporting specific historical events, or as a historicist might say “unique and autonomous historical forces” [where these “stand in a current and context comprehending the totality of events” and are always conditioned by their context])******** (p. 64, 68, 69; for more key paragraphs explaining historicism see 62)
Noland also touches on the modern era, with the “linguistic turn” in historiography, which insists that the historian’s language does not only represent or reflect “past actuality”, but in some sense also creates it – the “narrativist” Ankersmit, for example, “argued that the historical idea was a construction of historicists, which they mistakenly located in the past itself as its principle of coherence” – this is to be guilty of “reifying” the historical idea. In other words, the “historian’s language does not reflect a coherence… in the past itself but only gives coherence to the past” (Ankersmit, quoted on p. 80). Noland says that if the historical idea is simply an arbitrary concept it “may well be judged a bankrupt method and worldview”. On the other hand, he says “the historicist notion of a ‘cultural whole,’ for which there are evidential grounds in both present and past history, resists the complete dissolution of the historical idea into textuality” (p. 81).**********
How can the “good, the true, and the beautiful” avoid becoming that which certain persons – and those they choose to associate with – simply agree is – or they will say is – good, true and beautiful?
Also noteworthy here is that before postmodern critiques like this came into play, Heidegger’s “existentialist analysis of Dasein and its temporality” can be seen to coincide with prominent historicists like Diltheyfor example, who “judged that the internal experience of human ‘self’ and its historical memory” – “that strange fusion of memory and expectation” in internal experience – “afforded the only adequate foundation for historical knowledge” (p. 218). Unlike Vico, Dilthey summed up the view of many a modern historicist when he said that “the historical world cannot be subsumed under general values and laws, because history is constituted by the constant development of life in its inexhaustible and unpredictable fullness” (p. 219).
And we would also be remiss to mention how with the advent of Darwinism, this naturalism and historicism Troeltsch speak of could actually be imagined to merge together and go hand-in-hand, something Troeltsch himself observed had happened (pp. 48-50). I would sum this up by saying that the only difference here is that there are evolutionists more in line with Newton’s more naturalistic and mechanical approach (think Dawkins minus Newton’s piety) and those more in line with Goethe’s more organic approach to evolution (think Stephen J. Gould minus Goethe’s supernaturalism). Here, I would refer persons to Benjamin Wiker’s helpful book Moral Darwinism to help one get a sense of the long and interesting story of evolutionary ideas and their influence. Further, I would also add that notions of “essences” – that is unchanging things – at this time could be more easily associated with things like atoms (and today particles known to be even more fundamental) as opposed to things like dogs, cats, men, women, marriage, children, etc. Of course when this is pitched we are then left with this question: how can the “good, the true, and the beautiful” avoid becoming that which certain persons – and those they choose to associate with – simply agree is – or they will say is – good, true and beautiful?
Who do you trust indeed? Ah, trust. Who are the voices from history that really do have a handle on history – real history? We will pick up here tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can also see this post (“Put not your trust in men? Overcoming the Cretan’s paradox in Christ”) I did as regards the critical role of trust in the world in general and the Christian church in particular.
FIN
Notes:
* quoted by Marquart on p. 114, Anatomy of an Explosion: Missouri in Lutheran Perspective.He also quotes from a May 1975 Forum Letter:
“It is not enough to say that historical criticism means ‘discriminating appreciation.’ ‘The historian,’ says [David] Lotz, ‘must cross-examine, test, weigh, probe and analyze all written records of the past. If he fails to do this he de facto surrenders his claim to the title of historian!’ (p. 116, italics and bold mine)
Note that well. Evidently, we can’t seek to learn more about history simply because we are curious to do so. Of course questions will come, but no one can question absolutely everything.
As regards that first quote accompanying the Troeltsch picture, of course this “secular historical science” was in many cases advanced by professing Christians. Although for many of them, universal human reason which could be shared by all (producing clear and distinct ideas) was not necessarily supposed to be opposed to the Bible – such was the claim at the time.
** In light of the issues presented by Lutheran theologian and textual critic Jeffrey Kloha several months ago, Lutheran theologian and historian Martin Noland gave pastors and interested laypersons a reading list (as had Dr. Kloha), and I slowly begin working my way through some of those recommended titles. One of those titles was Dr. Noland’s dissertation, evidently recommended to help persons have more historical context for better and more complete understanding these issues. The dissertation is available through the ProQuest dissertations database and so can be readily obtained from most academic libraries (I have commented more on this issue that arose a few months ago here).
Another note: I shared this part of my series with Dr. Noland and he wanted to point out that he is not a historicist by just about any definition of the term. He actually took on this topic because his doctoral advisor, Dr. David Lotz, said that work needed to be done in this area for the “guild” of church historians.
*** Personal email, Aug. 3, 2014.
**** I can imagine that Aristotle would have found some of what Bacon had to say amenable to his own approach. After all, it was Aristotle who first pointed out that “Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena are more able to lay down principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations (quoted in Crawford, Shop class as Soulcraft, p. 23).”
***** Quote from a First Thoughts commentator I saw while writing this: “I recall coming across in my reading a description of the modern/postmodern worldview as a worldview that has in effect replaced the metaphysics of the ancients with epistemology. This observation seems particularly relevant [in the following case]: Whereas the Carthaginian inhabits a cosmos haunted by metaphysical gods demanding blood sacrifice, the Postmodern inhabits a world that is ultimately subject to his or her own solipsistic preferences: thus a fetus is a life when the mother wants it, but not when she doesn’t want it. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/01/child-sacrifice-ancient-and-modern
****** Later on, according to Noland, Hamann would, along with Berkeley, assert that “human beings experience a regularity in the world around them, which they then improperly abstract into a concept of ‘natural law’ that excludes from serious discourse, the mystical, and the religious” (p. 124). Noland notes that this assertion was not adopted by later historicists. Nevertheless, I was happy to see this insight from some respected thinkers, as it is something that I myself have thought of quite frequently (see here)
******* Manelbaum has stated that historicism helped people to obtain a “historical sense”, which involved being able to “shed the prejudices of the day” and the rejection of anachronism, and he says that the “historical sense” “has also been regarded as characteristic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (p. 66, 7 ; I note that there have always been careful historians who have tried to keep their prejudices and ignorance of other’s customs in check, and would point to the 16th c. Lutheran humanist Flacius as a good example of a historian like this). While this certainly sounds good, I note that one person’s “prejudice” may also be another person’s devout faith – and something they ought not give up
Note that on p. 113 Noland says that in Vico one cannot find the historicist principle of criticism (this would be where the historian tries to get behind the text, seeking for a “more credible” story) and yet it seems to me that the roots of this at least are clearly seen in this denial of more classical understandings of the terms “substance” or “essence”, which was certainly encouraged by Vico’s affinity for the Epicurean disciple, the Roman poet, Lucretius. If there are no stable categories that persons of varying backgrounds can agree on throughout time, can we, or should we, really be confident of anything that we are able to perceive? On what basis? The idea that we can be confident on the basis of a “principle of analogy”, affirming that human beings can know the things they have made (the mind’s awareness of its own productions over time) falls flat for both scientific (see Kant’s critique of this notion in his words vs. Herder) and practical reasons (for example, one simply needs to see all the important questions that historicists disagreed on! Which “self-understanding of the Spirit”???). Thus it is easy to see how the criticism that results in only skepticism without end gets started.
Further, on p. 96 note that Vico, in spite of his belief in a version of Divine providence, contrasted his own view with the “doctrinaires [i.e., the Cartesians], who “judge human actions as they ought to be, not as they actually are (i.e. performed more or less at random)” and who, “satisfied with abstract truth alone” and “unused to following probability” (emphasis mine), do not bother to “find out whether their opinion is held by the generality and whether the things that are truths to them are also such to other people”. While Vico is not dealing with the probability of historical events here, one can see how his idea of human belief and behavior – with the emphasis on generally held opinion and actions “performed more of less at random” – decreases the importance of both particular beliefs in the world and individual human agency (even if it does increase the importance shown to individual “forms” – according to Noland, as the father of “organicism” Vico could say that everything that is ‘made’ is ‘true”” and that “there are no mutations and no aberrations, only manifold potentialities”, p. 103), and with this the importance of character, and with this the importance of loyalty and trust. This seems like it will inevitably lead to even more criticism and dissolution. After all, men are ruled “not be forethought, but by whim or chance” (p. 99). Also note that in spite of his supposedly un-mythical-poetical use of the Bible (he applied the mythical-poetical critique to all the non-Christian/Jewish religions), Vico also did not believe that we were all one in Adam (p. 180).
******** Noland: “Historicists, to be sure, make ‘present experience’ a criterion of ‘what really happened’ in the past; but this methodological principle of analogy does not require one to minimize or otherwise obscure the ‘differentness’ of the past. Historicism, however, does oblige the historian to view events as ‘embedded within a pattern of development.’ The historical sense, by contrast, is content to investigate the discrete event as such, to determine its individual nature, apart from any concern to locate it in a larger developmental process.”
With this principle in mind, one wonders how much “differentness” the historicist is actually able to tolerate. Resurrections from the dead? The lives of totally unique human beings like Jesus of Nazareth, the very Son of God himself incarnate in the flesh? If historicism can only be conceived of in categories more Platonic than Aristotelian, one wonders where this leaves the importance of this concrete determinative action of the Son of God in human history.
One can see lots of Plato in Vico: “Abstract, or general truths are eternal; concrete or specific ones change momentarily from truths to untruths. Eternal truths stand above nature; in nature, instead, everything is unstable, mutable. But congruity exists between goodness and truth; they partake of the same essence, of the same qualities…. (p. 96)
That said, I do not think the idea of the “historical sense” is perfect either, when one considers the importance of not only God’s individual acts in history, but the ongoing story that the Bible tells of his faithfulness.
********** Note also this statement by Wayne Hudson, in his recent article, “Theology and historicism”, thesis eleven 116(1) 19-39, 2013: “Put bluntly, it is not clear why…. recurrent structural features should not also be historicized if things change in the course of history as much as historicists suggest. Conversely, if things do not change that much, then historicizing may have limited applications in other areas as well.”
Images: Wikipedia ; Noland – Brothers of John the Steadfast.
Pearls before swine. Allegory of Fortune (detail), Salvator Rosa, about 1658–59, www.getty.edu
“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” — Matthew 7:6
In part I, it was noted that in order to reflect more on how the Church should try to teach God’s law to all as it goes into exile, we could look at the debate that happened a few months ago between Ross Douthat and Joseph Bottum about the church and same-sex marriage. We saw that Bottum argues that since the culture has largely forgotten “the essential God-hauntedness” of the world, if we insist that same-sex marriage should not be allowed in civil law, persons will not understand this. We should rather focus our energies on trying to “re-enchant” the world.
First of all, I note that intelligent Lutherans like Dr. Gene Veith have for years been emphasizing the primacy of things like art, literature and film as vehicles for basically doing just this – all while not ignoring the political realm as well. Second, I think one must seriously wonder about the wisdom of Bottom’s argument given how the nature of sexuality naturally figures into the current debates so prominently. What Matthew B. Crawford says in his book “Shop Class as Soulcraft: an Inquiry into the Value of Work” comes to mind here:
“Stepping outside the intellectually serious circle of my teachers and friends at Chicago into the broader academic world, it struck me as an industry hostile to thinking. I once attended a conference entitled “After the Beautiful.” The premise was a variation on “the death of God,” the supposed disenchantment of the world, and so forth. Speaking up for my own sense of enchantment, I pointed out, from the audience, the existence of beautiful human bodies. Youthful ones, in particular. This must have touched a nerve, as it was greeted with incredulous howls of outrage from some of the more senior harpies.” (pp. 104-105).
Surprisingly relevant to our inquiry.
Crawford, who incidently has heterosexual inclinations, makes a good point here – there is a real sense that, despite what some have called the “buffered self”, there is still much enchantment here – at times, leading to thoughts, words and deeds that go hand in hand not only with adoration but real worship. See the Da Vinci Code veering in this direction.* But there is the wider point Bottom’s nemesis in the debate, Ross Douthat, makes:
…in a culture that’s increasingly libertine, atomized, and postfamilial, some of what the church has to say will necessarily have to do with sexuality. And in arguing about sexuality, there is no honest way for the church to avoid stating its position on what the legal definition of marriage ought to be—even in a world where that definition has changed and doesn’t seem likely to change back.
We can certainly take this even further. In the bible, both adoption and marriage – which always includes a physically intimate, or sexual, component – are the two great metaphors of the Bible: this is how God deals with His people. Further, marriage is arguably the stronger of the two metaphors – so perhaps in this sense at least, Christianity is mainly about “sexual issues” (see this interesting post by Rod Dreher that I initially wanted to rebel against**). Though we might find the imagery put forth in passages like Ezekiel 16 disturbing in many ways – the sexualized symbolism here is jarring to say the least – this uncomfortable parable has much to teach us about the nature of God’s relationship with those who trust in Him (I pondered this more here, offering a counterpoint to assertions made in Justification is for Preaching, ed. Virgil Thompson).
Christ and sex re-interpreted… Distorted.
Our adoption and marriage with Him – our salvation – is intimately tied up with notions not only of a secure identity and meaning (individually and corporately) but protection from all of the enemies – invisible and visible – who would mean to leave us in the lurch or worse (for ultimately, there is no salvation without corresponding damnation). Here is the One who cares about us weak and helpless ones, those who like sheep have gone astray – and who comforts and protects us. Note also that here we see how the publicly voiced concerns of same-sex marriage opponents – that this concept really leaves children in the lurch (listen to this short soundbite from Jennifer Roback Morse) – dovetails seamlessly with this biblical understanding of The True Marriage: God helps – saves – those those who cannot help – save – themselves.
While it is true that we would not have needed the kind of protection God now gives us before the fall into sin, here we can see how – as regards marriage – even the partial fulfillment of the law in the fallen creation hearkens us back to innocence, when love, trust, and security reigned. Ephesians 5 reveals more than God’s grace for sinners alone – it reveals God’s love for His human creatures. Christ’s specific actions for our redemption are not a completely new picture, but only more fully reveal this picture.
Of course the idea of gay marriage declares war against this, and elevates a sterile and fruitless icon to the fore. And as we know, the law always teaches, and this is one teaching that cuts away not only at God’s law – but His precious Gospel as well (in his marriage sermon on Eph. 5 Luther speaks of the union with Christ as a cause and an effect of justification***). How can we not speak up and out?
Again, here one sees that upholding the preaching of the Gospel goes hand in hand with the importance of continually upholding and making known God’s law. So, when the time is right,the arguments like those put forth by Douthat and Morse should continually be held before a world out of whack – even as we look to frame this within a greater purpose yet, that is the goal to verbally emphasize and live out in our lives Christ’s dying love for all – even the greatest of sinners.
Yes, Christ was and is married to His bride, the Church. “Like an apple tree… is my lover”, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1851-1860. Image.
A more pragmatic argument would be that if the church does not stand now, it will show itself to be weak (yes, there is a way that we should be weak but this is not it) and invite the state to tell it that it must, for example, perform same-sex weddings (as the church in Norway is now finding out). We could always assure ourselves that we should fight because the existence of Christian faithful believers in the world is critical so that the Gospel in its narrow sense (Christ’s death and resurrection for our forgiveness, life and salvation) – not to mention the full counsel of God of course – must be preached in its truth and purity. That said, I believe that this will inevitably be seen as a more selfish argument **** – and of course many of those calling the shots will not care about what they consider our incoherent “sense of our identity” one whit. That is why we fight battles like these for and on the basis of care and concern for our neighbor (skeptics please read this and this from Rod Dreher yesterday) – here is where folks like Douthat and Morse are dead right.*****
What might be said that calls into question what I have written here? I discussed these articles at length with some wise friends. One said that
“[Given fallen human nature and man’s corresponding ability to sear his conscience] the state may therefore have to concede things to sinners the church never could. This is done to give some order to something that otherwise would be totally devoid of order and so as to reign in the worst abuses. The law here functions as more or less imperfect curb of sin, in other words, and not as a means to eradicate sin in the world and to establish some perfect society here on earth (albeit even just outwardly). [Prudence demands the Christian politician, do this at particular times in order] to avoid the greater evil of total chaos in the political realm.”
It is true that general cultural appeals and exhortations to consider God’s law – even when done with the exquisite and carefully subtlety of an N.T. Wright (see below) – may accomplish nothing more than harden existing positions. And yet my concern here is that we might underestimate what it is possible to persuade the “left hand kingdom” (God’s rule in the world by law, reason, and force, as opposed to the “right hand kingdom”, where he rules hearts by the forgiveness, life and salvation his church delivers – see more here) to accept. There are times when we should take a stand, seeking to persuade persons regarding God’s laws not to “get a perfect society”, but to help our neighbors, in the abstract and the concrete, particularly the most vulnerable.******
My friend is right that “social conservatism is not a substitute for, or tantamount to, faithfulness to God’s Word” but at the same time, given the importance of the battles that Morse are Douthat are fighting here, it seems to me that these are some key questions:
How can we know when our words will just harden existing positions and when they, through the power of God’s Spirit, might cause persons to question their assumptions?
Is there some way to get a good sense of when and where to speak and when to just “give them over” (Romans 1) and stop speaking?”*******
I would be interested in any reflections persons have on these questions. I am not going to say that all who take Buttom’s position are necessarily wrong – or even insist that they lack the necessary courage. That said, I am going to say his position is, as a whole, unwise – for a whole host of reasons.********
As Peter Malysz (see part I) would no doubt warn, it is true that even fighting for a righteous cause can help feed our sinful flesh, filling us with a confident and noxious self-righteousness – before both neighbors and God. That said, pastors and theologians can and still must not hesitate to, by the grace of God, take the logs out of their own eyes and make the case of the Law as a curb. Regarding same-sex marriage, N.T. Wright gives us an excellent example of how to do that intelligently and with class (step one: like Paul, value a liberal arts education – see Acts 17). In addition, the video that I linked to in a previous post would be invaluable in revealing the gross untruth of the mono-logic that insists that things like “same-sex marriage” are equal in every way to real marriage (see below as well).
.
Pastors in particular should take every opportunity that is given to them to grab the microphone and speak to the wider culture.********* Always talking about the Gospel primarily but never at the expense of His Law, for it is good indeed, even if it takes utter collapse for the majority of a culture’s elites to start to think this might indeed be the case. If Christ does not come before that happens, many will realize that we were right.
Speaking as an adjunct university instructor, all the students I get in my classes on Christianity, although they may not have been in church for years (or are a different religion, or are completely non-religious), seem to be surprisingly persuadable on these issues. I am more or less convinced that is the case with many in the population as a whole (not all – some are very hardened, but in 220? students I have never met one) – they just need someone to talk to them intelligently about it.
So proclaim the whole counsel of God – to church and world – and try your best to do it with intelligence, class, and humility – before God and men.
FIN
Notes:
* Mark Henderson responding to tODD at Gene Veith’s blog on a “Christians in exile” post points out that: “paganism has always been mainly about [sex], and that is what Christianity is increasingly coming up against today: modern versions of paganism for whom sex in all its depraved variations is tantamount to a religious rite – the gateway to personal fulfillment. That is, of course, idolatry, and that is why sex is the arena in which the church is being attacked today: the Christian sexual ethic is a confessional stance against the idolatry of paganism just as it was in the 1st C[entury]”
**What about the Creeds we basically hold in common, I thought? Well, maybe one can make that case in a bit of a qualified way, but Dreher has a point as well.
***While it is true that we do not want to be just talking about sex all the time, maybe we should be emphasizing *this* marriage – this intimate union – more.
****Here is that argument anyways, with the situation the church in Norway faces in mind:
Why not speak out now as much as we are able? Should we not do this? While we do not know the mind of God as regards the particulars, should we not insist that ultimately it is pleasing to God – much better, according to Him – that Christians would be able to freely preach and worship? (because in effect, I believe the alternative is to say that it pleases God when there are less Christians in society and it please Him when His word is rejected).
We can bravely talk about how we can take it if they take away our tax exempt status, don’t allow Christian hospitals to hire Christian workers, don’t allow Christian groups to be organizations approved by the university, take away our accreditation, etc. But are we all brave about this really because we think it would stop there?
If that’s the case, it evidently doesn’t. Christians can certainly expect to continue to lose the perks that they have had up to this point, and probably much more.
****** Re: church and state, its always hard for me to negotiate what things are like now with what they were like in Luther’s day and then the pre-Constantinian days… and then what they should be. Ideally (as ideally as a fallen world can imagine) should the state have the authority to enforce the table of the 10 commandments? If more and more persons were to become Christian and this could be done, should it be done? As these questions are considered I think this way: it seems to me that the state would be incompetent to judge persons by the Scriptures without the Church. But then would it not be the Church and its clergy who are basically in charge? (as they would have to correct the Christian ruler were he to do things less than ideally, and ask – insist? – that he obey).
******* We can’t! Which is why, when it comes to having the microphone to speak to the wider culture, we should be more like Douthat – who more or less always writes in thoughtful fashion tempered by Christ’s love – and not Bottom. Perhaps even if no one is changed. Both the nature of our enemy and the love of God for that enemy demand it. And yes, I think we should have done the same thing when it came to easy divorce. That was another watershed moment. The church rightly saw the issue of abortion as one to fight on, but not this one (and now, just recently, they have 1 day divorce through the courts in California).
******** One other reason is that this approach often seems to go hand-in-hand with theological outlooks that are, even if not unorthodox, are readily “hi-jackable”. There are also theologies that are simply wrong that could readily be appropriated by persons who believe that this aspect of “God’s law” should change, even if those putting forth the theology do not appear to want to change God’s Law. For example, Mark Mattes, a frequent contributor to LOGIA, writes that Jesus, in becoming sin for us, was ‘”in the end justly accused as a violator of the Torah – God’s own law….” Mark Mattes, “The History, Shape, and Significance of Justification”, in in Virgil Thopson, ed.,Justification is for Preaching, (Eugene: Pickwick, 2012), 53.”
As one digs deeper, they realize that a big part of these debates has to do with anthropology. Is the fallen human being, who certainly has a “relationship with God”, totally human, in the image of God? It is true that in fallen man this image is lost… but he still has some residue of his origin within him. Therefore, in Luke 3, Adam is called “the son of God” and in Psalm 82:6 Jesus says “You are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High.” Man’s “relation” to God was that he was specifically created to be something different than the rest of creation (also note that Luther said people were created in God’s image before the beginning of time [see Luther’s works 1:75]. So while we cannot say of each person born that they are *in* the Image of God [since original sin is present, and causes the absence of this image], we can still say that each person is created by God in His image. The power of sin is not something that God creates).
********* Let’s say you are given the chance that Kurt Marquart often had or Pastor Charles St. Onge has to write for a local newspaper. What should your articles contain, in one fashion or another? a) intelligent and discussion of issue people are thinking about (like Wright) ; b) mention that the church’s position cannot change, even if the true church is marginalized ; c) some direction to, or hint of, the first table as greater issue, even as thankful for non-Christian neighbors as co-belligerents ; and d) the Gospel, which you note, transcends all our earthly politics. In any short piece, you insist that you want to talk about all those things in one way or another. Further, you insist to local editors that you need to see the result of their editing before they publish your words.
Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg receives communion as a Lutheran for the first time in St. Nikolai Church in Spandau (Carl Röhling, 1913).
When I returned to the church of my baptism as an undergraduate in college, I experienced an intense desire to to learn quickly all that I felt I should have known, but didn’t. Lutheranism was what I had been looking for all along, even though I never would have known it from my experience growing up in it. It was as though I wanted to make up for lost time. Part of this was my vanity, to be sure — I didn’t want to appear ignorant of my own confession! — but part of it was a genuine hunger for the truth. Though I had been confirmed in seventh grade (does this face say “joy of the Lord” or what?) I underwent true catechesis for the first time as a college sophomore. On my own, however, I sought and scrounged for all that I could get my hands on, often on the internet. Google search queries like “What do Lutherans believe about…” and “Lutheran teaching on…” littered my browser-history. And more often than not, such queries led me to one site in particular:
Yes sir and ma’am. Have you ever been to this site? You probably have. Like me, you probably have it bookmarked. Like me, you probably marvel at both the quantity and quality of the content. And maybe you also, like me, are highly nostalgic for the Web 2.0 look and feel — it’s like the Drudge Report of Lutheran theology!
I have never met Pr. David Jay Webber in real life; we have only ever communicated by email, etc. But I owe this undershepherd of Christ a debt of gratitude for the work he has done in maintaining this excellent online theology compendium. I hope that all who are reading this will take time to take a look at it and promote it to your friends and family. Both of these shortlinks are permanently linked to his site:
Rev. Webber is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Scottsdale, AZ, a member congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS). The piece below was prepared for the Evangelical Lutheran Synod West Coast Pastors’ Conference in Yelm, Washington, February 7-8, 2012, and was delivered at that conference in absentia. It was published in Lutheran Synod Quarterly, Vol. 52, Nos. 2-3 (June-September 2012), pp. 195-248. Pr. Webber has graciously allowed Just & Sinner to re-post his work. It’s original location is here.
Some notes on the essay: first off — it’s long, coming in at 34 pages single-spaced if you print it out. Secondly, however — it’s phenomenally good. You simply must read it. Do it in several sittings if you must, or plow straight through (seriously, it’s not that long). But read the whole thing. Thirdly — it’s heavily footnoted. But these are no ordinary footnotes. No, they won’t grow into a beanstalk if you plant them, but they will zoom to the note when you click them, and then zoom back to your spot in the essay when you click the little return arrow after the note (↩). I labored over this feature because I think that many of the footnotes are highly worth reading.
That’s all I have to say. I will now let Pr. Webber’s fine essay speak for itself. If you like it, I ask that you would please pass it around. Make it trend!
(NB: Graphics in the piece are not original but were added by me. — TDD)
“Walking Together” in Faith and Worship:
Exploring the Relationship between
Doctrinal Unity and Liturgical Unity in the Lutheran Church
Orthodox Lutherans confess, in the words of the Smalcald Articles, that “the Word of God – and no one else, not even an angel — should establish articles of faith.”1 They likewise confess, by means of the Formula of Concord, that “only on the basis of God’s Word can judgments on articles of faith be made.”2 When our Confessions speak of “God’s Word” in these contexts, they mean, of course, the Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.3 It is from the Scriptures, then, that we learn what God wants us to believe and confess.
One of the important things that we know from Scripture is that God wills there to be a Biblically-based unity in doctrine and practice within His church, in all matters where His Word has spoken:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20, ESV4)
God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. (1 Corinthians 1:9-10, NKJV5)
Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve. (Romans 16:16-18, ESV)
And the unity that God requires, is also the unity that God gives. As God’s Spirit works in the hearts and minds of His people through the means of grace, He Himself creates and bestows the unity in faith and confession that He wills to be preserved among us. It is only by the working of the Holy Spirit that we can believe and say — collectively and individually — that “Jesus is Lord” (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:3). And so, when Christians seek with God’s help “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3, ESV), they know in faith that this unity is not ultimately a product of their own intellectual efforts or consensus-building skills. It is rooted instead in the Trinitarian reality of “one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6, ESV). When the Gospel supernaturally draws us into a union with the Holy Trinity, it also at the same time draws us into a unity of faith and confession with each other.
This does not necessarily mean that the same terminology or mode of conceptualization must slavishly be followed by everyone, or that there cannot be differences in emphasis or in logical presentation among people who still recognize among themselves the kind of doctrinal unity that God requires. A comparison between the epistles of St. Paul and the epistles of St. John or St. Peter — not to mention the epistle of St. James! — will quickly reveal many examples of these sorts of variations, even in the inspired Scriptures. The unity among Christians and churches that God’s Word demands, and that God’s Word gives when that Word is mutually received in faith, is not, and need not be, an absolute sameness in every respect.
This is not an endorsement of the unionistic notion that Christians need to be united only in the so-called “fundamental” articles of faith. We are to be united in all revealed articles of faith. And yet, as C. F. W. Walther wisely notes, “The church militant must indeed aim at and strive for complete unity of faith and doctrine, but it never will attain a higher degree of unity than a fundamental one.”6 So, while our unity is to be in all the articles of faith, and not only in the “fundamental” articles, what we should seek to recognize among our brothers and sisters in Christ is a fundamental agreement in those articles of faith, and not necessarily an absolute agreement in every conceivable way. John P. Meyer elaborates on this:
Those are in fundamental agreement who, without any reservation, submit to the Word of God. When the Word of God has spoken in any matter, that matter is settled. There may be things that some men have not yet found in their study of the Bible; there may be matters with reference to which they have accustomed themselves to an inadequate mode of expression; yet, no matter what their deficiency may be, they are determined to accept the Bible doctrine. Where such is the case, there is fundamental agreement. … A fundamental agreement is all the church can ever hope to attain here on earth. We are not all equally gifted; one has a much clearer and a much more comprehensive insight into God’s doctrines than another. We all strive to grow daily in understanding. Besides, when once we have accustomed ourselves to a faulty or an inadequate expression, it is not only difficult to unlearn the particular phrase and to acquire a proper one, but the inadequate term may tend also to warp our views on other points. Yet, in spite of all such differences, where there is an unconditional willingness to hear what God has to say in his Word, there is fundamental agreement.7
We also need to remember that many matters of churchly practice are actually matters of doctrine. For example, when Jesus commands the Church and its ministers to go and make disciples of all nations, He lays out the specific practical actions — the baptizing with water and the giving of instruction — that are fundamentally constitutive of what Christian disciple-making is. We have no doctrine of discipleship that is not also a practice of discipleship. Likewise, the Sacrament of the Altar, as Jesus instituted it, is not only a doctrinal matter of “this is,” but it is also a practical matter of “this do.” Our church’s doctrine of the threefold sacramental action of consecration, distribution, and reception, is implemented in a very practical way whenever the Lord’s Supper is correctly celebrated.
In those arenas of the life of the Church where God’s Word has not spoken directly and explicitly regarding how we must proceed, and what methods we must use, we do, of course, acknowledge the principle of Christian freedom. But this freedom must not be abused in a spirit of pride and arrogance. It must also not be re-defined on the basis of the idolatrous notion of the “autonomy of the will” that has been elevated to an article of faith by post-Enlightenment man, in a sinful distortion of what freedom under God is supposed to mean.
In these matters, the freedom we have is the freedom to seek out and find the best and most faithful way to warn our neighbor against error; the best and most faithful way to confess and apply the message of salvation to our neighbor; and the best and most faithful way to serve our neighbor in love. We do not have the freedom to hide the severity of God’s Law under a veil of compromise; to obscure the purity of God’s Gospel with a smokescreen of evasion; or to manipulate our neighbor into serving us and our carnal agendas. St. Paul warns us:
“Everything is permissible” – but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible” – but not everything is constructive. (1 Corinthians 10:23-24, NIV8)
And so, while there may not be a divine requirement for unity in everything that is actually done in all places and circumstances, there is a divine requirement for unity in purpose and motive in what is done. Whatever we do in the Lord’s name, and for the advancement of His kingdom, we must be doing for the right reasons, as God in Scripture defines those reasons. And what that usually means for Christian brethren — when the doctrine that is intended to be expressed through their respective practices is the same doctrine — is that the practices more often than not usually turn out to be pretty similar, too. In most areas of church activity, what will most naturally emerge among those who have a fundamental unity in their confession of faith, is a fundamental unity in practice as well: not an absolute sameness in every respect, but a fundamental unity. And the closer people are to each other in fraternal cooperation and shared effort, geographically and culturally, the closer will be the similarity in practice. Or at least this is what we would predict, when the “law of love” is operative in such relationships among churches, pastors, and Christians in general.
II.
The Symbolical Books contained in our Book of Concord were prepared by gifted pastors and teachers at times in Christian history when the very heart of the church’s faith was under severe attack. The ancient Fathers, as they composed and promulgated the Ecumenical Creeds, and the Reformers of the sixteenth century, as they composed and promulgated the distinctly Lutheran Confessions, were acutely aware of the fact that almighty God had called them to defend and proclaim the truth of Christ as it is revealed in Holy Scripture, over against the faith-destroying heresies of their respective eras. The Symbolical Books of the Church, written by divine vocation and under divine providence in such circumstances, are not just curious historical relics of bygone ages. They are, rather, highly relevant testimonies to God’s unchanging truth, for the benefit of the church of all generations:
The Lutheran Confessions in the Book of Concord clarify, as precisely as human language allows, what the Bible teaches about God, sin, Christ, justification, church and ministry, repentance, the sacraments, free will, good works, and other articles of faith. They identify abuses in doctrine and practice, and most clearly state what Lutherans do not believe, teach, and confess. They are declarations of belief, making clear that Lutherans have convictions which are not open to question. The confessions clarify the Lutheran concern that only the Word be taught. Soon after its initial publication, the Book of Concord became the standard in doctrinal confrontations with Roman Catholics and with Calvinists. Where a Lutheran position seemed unclear or uncertain, the Book of Concord became a reference point for the authentic Lutheran view. Whereas the writings of Luther, as notable as they are, reveal the insights of one man, the Book of Concord expresses the theology of the whole Lutheran movement.9
As we would compare these various Creeds and Confessions to each other, we would certainly notice differences among them in form and structure. The logic of the Nicene Creed, for example, is developed in a typically “Greek” way, as it addresses the mystery of three Divine Persons existing as one God10, while the logic of the Athanasian Creed is developed in a typically “Latin” way, as it addresses the mystery of one God existing in three Divine Persons.11
In the sixteenth century Martin Luther was self-evidently the leader of the “Lutheran” Reformation movement. But he in his person and personality was not that movement. And he was not the only author of the Confessions that emerged from that movement. The multiplicity of authorship that characterizes the Reformation-era Symbolical Books quite naturally resulted in very recognizable differences in style and form of presentation, also among the various sixteenth-century confessional documents. But as Hermann Sasse points out, these non-dogmatic differences are not a weakness, but a strength. He writes that…
…in every living church there must be room for a variety of theological thinkers, provided they are in agreement as to the dogma of the Church. Thus, a difference of interest in, or emphasis on, certain points of doctrine, and even a difference of expression, could well be tolerated. Luther always felt that he and his learned friend [Philip Melanchthon] supplemented each other. As Melanchthon had learned from him, so he had learned from Melanchthon. It has great significance for the Lutheran church that its Confessions were not written by Luther alone. As Melanchthon’s Augsburg Confession, Apology, and Tractatus are happily supplemented by Luther’s Smalcald Articles and Catechisms, so even the Formula of Concord was written by disciples of Melanchthon and of Luther. This variety in expression of one and the same truth gave the Lutheran Confessions a richness which the confessions of other churches do not possess. Nothing is more significant for the Lutheran church’s independence of human authority than the fact that Luther approved of the Augsburg Confession although he clearly stated that he would have written it in a totally different way.12
The variations in terminology, structure, and emphasis that one finds among the Creeds and Confessions do not represent dogmatic divergences. The Symbolical Books are in fundamental agreement with each other. They are important constitutive parts of the harmonious symphony of teaching and confession that has always characterized how God’s truth is faithfully expressed and joyfully embraced by God’s people. The diversity of styles that we see among the various apostolic authors of the New Testament testifies to the fact that God’s Biblical revelation does not come to us in an uninteresting monotone form. Likewise, the Greek and Latin Fathers, and the complementary Confessional traditions of Luther and his disciples, and of Melanchthon and his disciples, mutually enrich each other. Together they all enrich the whole church, not in spite of their diversity of expression, but precisely in and through that diversity of expression.
The Book of Concord points us always to Scripture, as it reverently unfolds and carefully expounds the message of Scripture. Through our common recognition and mutual use of the Book of Concord – in this way and for this purpose – the kind of unity in the church that Scripture requires and creates can indeed be experienced and strengthened among us. This is why the delegates from the (old) Norwegian Synod who had been sent out to investigate the various Lutheran bodies of America — after getting acquainted with the pastors and institutions of the Missouri Synod of that time — issued this report to their church body in 1857:
It is a real joy to be able to say, in gratitude to God, that we have invariably got the impression that they are all possessed of the same spirit…: a heartfelt trust in God, a sincere love for the symbols and the doctrines of the fathers, and a belief that in them His holy Word is rightly explained and interpreted; and therefore a sacrificial, burning zeal to apply these old-Lutheran principles of doctrine and order. May the Lord graciously revive this spirit throughout the entire Lutheran church, so that those who call themselvesLutherans may no longer wrangle over questions settled by the Lutheran Confessions. Maythey rather show their true Lutheranism by truly believing that God’s Word is taught rightly and without error in the Lutheran Confessions. Otherwise, the Lutheran name is but duplicity and hypocrisy.13
III.
Lutheran theology, as it is articulated in the Lutheran Confessions, is fundamentally a liturgical theology. This means two things. First, it means that the worship life of the Lutheran Church is an important focal point in discerning what the overall theology of the Lutheran Church actually is. And second, it means that those aspects of Lutheran theology that are not directly a part of the Church’s practice of worship still need to be seen according to their connection to what goes on in worship. Lutheranism’s liturgy exhibits and implements its theology, and Lutheranism’s theology informs and shapes its liturgy.
When we speak in such a way of the Church’s liturgy and of its liturgical life, we are not talking merely about the rites and ceremonies of the Church’s worship. We are using the term “liturgy” according to the deeper theological meaning that is attached to it in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, where the position of the Lutherans on what properly constitutes the Christian “liturgy” is explained:
But let us speak about the term “liturgy.” This word does not properly mean a sacrifice but rather public service. Thus, it agrees quite well with our position, namely, that the one minister who consecrates gives the body and blood of the Lord to the rest of the people, just as a minister who preaches sets forth the Gospel to the people, as Paul says [1 Cor. 4:1], “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries,” that is, of the Gospel and the Sacraments. And 2 Corinthians 5:20, “So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making His appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. …” Thus the term “liturgy” fits well with the ministry.14
We see here a convergence of three important loci: the purpose and character of the Church’s gatherings for worship; the purpose and character of the Church’s public ministry; and the purpose and character of the Church’s marks — that is, the means of grace. All three of these things are addressed under the overarching category of the “liturgy.” They cannot properly be considered in isolation from each other, as if they were not theologically and practically connected. They belong together. And that theological “togetherness” of worship, ministry, and means of grace is, quite simply, the liturgical theology of our church. We are reminded of how the Book of Acts describes the liturgical life of the first Christian congregation in Jerusalem: “Those who accepted [Peter’s] message were baptized… They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers” (Acts 2:41-42, NAB15).
The Augsburg Confession declares that…
…One Holy Church will remain forever. The Church is the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught purely and the Sacraments are administered rightly. And it is enough for the true unity of the Church to agree concerning the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by human beings be alike everywhere. As Paul says [Eph. 4:5,6]: “One faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all…”16
The point of comparison here is between a pure and orthodox teaching of the Gospel and a right administration of the evangelical Sacraments, on the one hand, and human traditions on the other. The point of comparison is not between the Gospel minimalistically defined and the sacraments on the one hand, and other less important articles of faith on the other — as ecumenically-minded Lutherans often maintain. Such attempts to smuggle into the Book of Concord a demand for unity only in fundamental doctrines, rather than a demand for fundamental unity in all doctrines, are both misguided and anachronistic. This is made clear by the elaborations and clarifications on this matter that are made by the Formula of Concord, which says that “the churches are not to condemn one another because of differences in ceremonies when in Christian freedom one has fewer or more than the other, as long as these churches are otherwise united in teaching and in all the articles of the faith as well as in the proper use of the Holy Sacraments.”16
But we should take note of the fact that the articles of faith in which the churches are in this way to be united, are the articles of faith that are actively to be taught in the churches. We are not speaking here of officially-adopted but seldom-read doctrinal statements, collecting dust on a Lutheran parish library shelf. We are speaking instead of the substantial doctrinal preaching, permeated with the proper distinction and application of Law and Gospel, that is to be heard regularly from a Lutheran parish pulpit. The Formula of Concord recognizes that
…in His immeasurable goodness and mercy God provides for the public proclamation of His divine, eternal Law and of the wondrous counsel of our redemption, the Holy Gospel of his eternal Son, our only Savior Jesus Christ, which alone can save. By means of this proclamation He gathers an everlasting Church from humankind, and He effects in human hearts true repentance and knowledge of sin and true faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. God wants to call human beings to eternal salvation, to draw them to Himself, to convert them, to give them new birth, and to sanctify them through these means, and in no other way than through His holy Word (which people hear proclaimed or [which they] read) and through the Sacraments (which they use according to his Word).17
Law-Gospel preaching is not, of course, simply preaching about the doctrine of the Law and the doctrine of the Gospel as such. Rather, we are to preach about everything that we preach about, in a Law-Gospel way. Proper Lutheran preaching — simultaneously evangelical, catechetical, and practical in its character — is described in the Apology, where a comparison is made between a typical Sunday in a sixteenth-century Romanist parish, and a typical Sunday in a sixteenth-century Lutheran parish:
Among the opponents there are many regions where no sermons are delivered during the entire year except during Lent. And yet the chief worship of God is to preach the Gospel. And when the opponents do preach, they talk about human traditions, about the devotion to the saints and similar trifles. … A few of the better ones have begun now to speak about good works, but they still say nothing about the righteousness of faith, about faith in Christ, and about the consolation of consciences. Indeed they rail against this most salutary part of the Gospel in their polemics. On the contrary, in our churches all the sermons deal with topics like these: repentance, fear of God, faith in Christ, the righteousness of faith, consolation of consciences through faith, the exercise of faith, prayer (what it should be like and that everyone may be completely certain that it is efficacious and is heard), the cross, respect for the magistrates and all civil orders, the distinction between the kingdom of Christ (the spiritual kingdom) and political affairs, marriage, the education and instruction of children, chastity, and all the works of love. From this description of the state of our churches it is possible to determine that we diligently maintain churchly discipline, godly ceremonies, and good ecclesiastical customs.18
Let us note the important statement that “the chief worship of God is to preach the Gospel,” and that “the righteousness of faith,” “faith in Christ,” and “the consolation of consciences” are identified with this Gospel. Sermons that are devoid of such content are not Lutheran sermons. They are not genuinely Christian sermons. But in the same breath, the Apology lists an array of doctrinal and ethical topics that are to be covered in Lutheran sermons. These two emphases can and should guide us and our homiletical practice.
Pastors assure their brother pastors that they are one in doctrine with them, by preaching publicly the doctrine in which they are one. And when they preach that doctrine — that doctrine of the Gospel — the righteousness of Christ is thereby preached upon their listeners, and the indwelling Christ is thereby preached into their listeners. In Christ’s justification of His people, and in Christ’s mystical union with His people, the Church is built up in faith and life, and the true unity of the Church in Christ its Lord and head is strengthened.
Rev. Webber with the sainted Rev. Dr. Kurt Marquart.
There does not need to be a lock-step uniformity in terminology, with memorized formulas or clichés being repeated unimaginatively from every pulpit. Again, what we have the right to expect from each other is a fundamental unity in Biblical truth, not an absolute and rigid conformity in every form of expression that is used. But a fundamental unity is what we do expect.
Therapeutic sermons that soft-pedal or ignore the articles of faith that Scripture teaches, and that take their cues instead from the realm of popular self-help psychology, are unacceptable. Moralistic sermons that are governed and shaped by the Law, in which the Gospel does not predominate, are unacceptable. Sermons that are designed to manipulate the will and emotions, rather than to deliver Christ, are unacceptable. Sermons that are imbued with the personality of a flamboyant preacher, that are filled with jokes and funny stories, and that say very little if anything about God and salvation, are unacceptable:
“Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat?” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 23:28, ESV).
And of course, it is not just the preaching of pastors to which we should pay close attention, in our desire to remain united in Christ and in His Word. The administration of the Sacraments, too, is to be done with a proper liturgical conformity to the institution of Christ; with a proper appreciation for the pastoral dimension of sacramental oversight; and with a proper concern for the public confession that is made in conjunction with the sacramental life of the Church. We should never create a situation — through carelessness or through deliberate unwarranted innovations — where doubt in the validity or efficacy of a sacrament is caused by our failure to say exactly what we are supposed to say, or to do exactly what we are supposed to do.
This is an especially sensitive point in regard to the Lord’s Supper, where there have been so many debates and controversies over the years. If we are serious about maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and if we are concerned about the certainty in faith of those whom we are called to serve, we need to avoid any and all questionable and unedifying speculation about what we can “get away with” in how the Supper might be administered — as well as any and all unsettling experimentation in its administration, flowing out of such speculation. The Formula of Concord offers us a minutely careful exegetical description of what Jesus said and did, and of what Jesus wills His presiding ministers to say and do, in the celebration of the Sacrament. This ought to be the final word for us in regard to many of these debates and controversies. Let us pay close attention to what the Formula teaches us:
For the true and almighty words of Jesus Christ, which He spoke in the first institution of the Supper, …retain their validity and power and are still effective, so that in all places in which the Supper is observed according to Christ’s institution and His words are used, the body and blood of Christ are truly present, distributed and received on the basis of the power and might of the very same words that Christ spoke in the first Supper. For wherever what Christ instituted is observed and His words are spoken over the bread and cup and wherever the consecrated bread and cup are distributed, Christ Himself exercises His power through the spoken words, which are still His Word, by virtue of the power of the first institution. …Luther says: “This command and institution of His have the power to accomplish this, that we do not distribute and receive simply bread and wine but His Body and Blood, as His words indicate: ‘This is My Body, this is My Blood.’ So it is not our work or speaking but the command and ordinance of Christ that make the bread the Body and the wine the Blood, beginning with the first Lord’s Supper and continuing to the end of the world, and it is administered daily through our ministry or office.” Likewise, “Here, too, if I were to say over all the bread there is, ‘This is the body of Christ,’ nothing would happen, but when we follow His institution and command in the Supper and say, ‘This is my body,’ then it is His body, not because of our speaking or our declarative word, but because of his command in which he has told us to speak and to do and has attached His own command and deed to our speaking.”20
The doctrine of the public ministry is another area where there have been many disputes over the years. Even if all these disputes have not yet been settled, Lutherans who sincerely subscribe to the Confessions should still be expected to acknowledge together, at the very least, that everything the Confessions do already teach regarding the Biblical doctrine of the ministry does constitute a major component of what they believe regarding the ministry.
Preaching and teaching “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27, ESV), and exercising general spiritual oversight in the Church (cf. 1 Timothy 3:1-7), require a level of pastoral competence that is lacking in most Christians. “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1, ESV).21 Officiating at the administration of the Sacraments, in the way that God wants this to be done, also involves more than simply performing the mechanics of the rite — which any Christian could conceivably master.
An examination of the faith of adult baptizands, or of the faith of the parents and sponsors of those who are baptized in infancy, is, in ordinary circumstances, an important and necessary component of the proper administration of Baptism — in view of the fact that Jesus links the administration of this sacrament with the duty to teach all that He has commanded (cf. Matthew 28:19-20). This is an aspect of the spiritual care of souls, to which not everyone is called, and for which not everyone is qualified.
And this kind of soul-care and spiritual oversight is particularly necessary for the proper administration of the Lord’s Supper, with which is associated an explicit apostolic warning of potential harmful consequences — spiritual and temporal — for communicants who partake of the Sacrament in an unworthy manner (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:27-32). Admitting communicants to the altar, or declining to admit them, is a serious matter. It is an exercising of pastoral authority over those communicants. John F. Brug reflects the classic Lutheran understanding when he writes:
It is clear that the Lord’s Supper should be administered by the pastor. It is not our practice to have a layman officiate at the Lord’s Supper. Even when congregations were quite isolated and some did not have a pastor present every Sunday, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated only when the pastor was present. Proper administration of the Lord’s Supper involves more than being able to read the right words. It involves pastoral responsibility for the souls of those who attend.22
In something as important as the faithful and orderly administration of the means of grace — which is itself a matter of New Testament doctrine — a Biblically-based unity and consensus in practice is of the highest necessity. The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope draws together many of the strands of Biblical teaching that pertain to the question of spiritual care in the church, and speaks on behalf of all true Lutherans when it confesses that
The Gospel bestows upon those who preside over the churches the commission to proclaimthe Gospel, forgive sins, and administer the Sacraments. In addition, it bestows legal authority, that is, the charge to excommunicate those whose crimes are public knowledge and to absolve those who repent. It is universally acknowledged, even by our opponents, that this power is shared by divine right by all who preside in the churches, whether they are called pastors, presbyters, or bishops.23
When the Treatise declares here that “The Gospel” bestows this commission and authority on the “presiding” ministers of the church, we know from the context that what it is saying is that the New Testament revelation bestows this commission and authority on them.24 Such a ministry, with such liturgical duties entrusted to it, does not exist only on the basis of a human arrangement, only as a matter of practical expediency, or only as a consequence of historical development. It is, as the Treatise says, a matter of “divine right” that such men are called to such work among God’s people.
The various outward configurations of the Church’s pastoral ministry have indeed developed and changed over time and exist today in a multiplicity of forms. Spiritual oversight can be and is carried out among God’s people by pastors with comprehensive and general calls, and by pastors with focused and specialized calls; by pastors in parish settings, and by pastors in institutional or mission settings. But the essence of the pastoral ministry more generally considered — that is, the supervision and care of souls in Word and Sacrament, by men who have been properly trained for this work and properly called to this work — is willed and mandated by God for the Church of all times and places.
The Apology teaches that “priests…are called to preach the Gospel and to administer the Sacraments to the people. … For the Church has the mandate to appoint ministers, which ought to please us greatly because we know that God approves this ministry and is present in it.”25 These are the “spiritual fathers” and “preachers,” who “govern and guide us by the Word of God” and who “watch over” our souls, about whom Luther speaks in his Large Catechism explanation of the Fourth Commandment.26
As far as the pastoral competency of those who are called to a presiding ministry in the Church is concerned, the Small Catechism — drawing directly from St. Paul’s pastoral epistles — lays out the God-given requirements for “Bishops, Pastors, and Preachers” in these words:
A bishop is to be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, virtuous, moderate, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not vicious, not involved in dishonorable work, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not stingy, one who manages his own household well, who has obedient and honest children, not a recent convert, who holds to the Word that is certainand can teach, so that he may be strong enough to admonish with saving teaching and to refute those who contradict it.” From 1 Timothy 3[:2-4,6a; Titus 1:9].27
No…
We see here that the office of spiritual oversight is to be entrusted only to qualified men who have a level of knowledge necessary for comprehensive teaching, for admonition, and for refutation of error.28 When congregations honor these standards in the calls that they issue to ministries of liturgical presidency in their midst, this contributes significantly to the unity in doctrine and practice that God wants His Church to have. It is self-evident that God’s Word is more likely to be preached accurately, and with the proper division of Law and Gospel, when men who have been carefully trained to preach God’s Word accurately and properly to divide Law and Gospel are the ones who are doing the preaching! But it also contributes toward the preservation of trust among brother pastors and sister congregations, and reflects a proper respect for the covenant of fraternal order to which the pastors and congregations of a synod are pledged, when the provisions of that fraternal covenant are consistently followed. And that means, among other things, that the duties of pastoral oversight should be carried out in the various congregations by individuals whose qualifications and credentials are recognized by the Church at large — by means of their “clergy roster” status, or their “ordained minister” status.29
IV.
We have already noted that, according to the seventh article of the Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran Church teaches that “It is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by human beings be alike everywhere.” At the same time, in the fifteenth article of the Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran Church teaches that those “church rites…should be observed that can be observed without sin and that contribute to peace and good order in the church, for example, certain holy days, festivals, and the like. However, people are reminded not to burden consciences, as if such worship were necessary for salvation.”30 These two complementary points are repeated, and expanded on, later in the Augustana:
…the canons are not so severe as to demand that rites should be the same everywhere, nor have the rites of all churches ever been the same. Nevertheless, the ancient rites are, for the most part, diligently observed among us. For the accusation is false that all ceremonies and ancient ordinances are abolished in our churches. Truth is, there has been a public outcry that certain abuses have become fused to the common rites. Because such abuses could not be approved with a good conscience, they have been corrected to some extent. …the churches among us do not dissent from the Catholic Church in any article of faith but only set aside a few abuses that are new and were accepted because of corruption over time contrary to the intention of the canons… However, it can easily be judged that nothing contributes more to preserving the dignity of ceremonies and to cultivating reverence and piety among the people than conducting ceremonies properly in the churches.31
The Apology likewise repeats, and further explains, these points:
…just as the different lengths of day and night do not undermine the unity of the Church, so we maintain that different rites instituted by human beings do not undermine the true unity of the Church, although it pleases us when universal rites are kept for the sake of tranquillity. Thus, in our churches we willingly observe the order of the Mass, the Lord’s day, and other more important festival days. With a very grateful spirit we cherish the useful and ancient ordinances, especially when they contain a discipline by which it is profitable to educate and teach [the] common folk and [the] ignorant.32
The teaching of the Formula of Concord on the topic of adiaphora is also often introduced into this discussion. There we read that…
We should not regard as free and indifferent, but rather as things forbidden by God that are to be avoided, the kind of things presented under the name and appearance of external, indifferent things that are nevertheless fundamentally opposed to God’s Word (even if they are painted another color). Moreover, we must not include among the truly free adiaphora or indifferent matters ceremonies that give the appearance or (in order to avoid persecution) are designed to give the impression that our religion does not differ greatly from the papist religion or that their religion were not completely contrary to ours. Nor are such ceremonies matters of indifference when they are intended to create the illusion (or are demanded or accepted with that intention), as if such action brought the two contradictory religions into agreement and made them one body or as if a return to the papacy and a deviation from the pure teaching of the Gospel and from the true religion had taken place or could gradually result from these actions. … In the same way, useless, foolish spectacles, which are not beneficial for good order, Christian discipline, or evangelical decorum in the Church, are not true adiaphora or indifferent things. …
Therefore, we believe, teach, and confess that the community of God in every time and place has the right, power, and authority to change, reduce, or expand such practices according to circumstances in an orderly and appropriate manner, without frivolity or offense, as seems most useful, beneficial, and best for good order, Christian discipline, evangelical decorum, and the building up of the Church.33
What we see in these Confessional excerpts is a balanced and well-thought-through position on the matter of how the church properly evaluates and understands those ecclesiastical practices — especially in the arena of public worship — that are in themselves neither commanded nor forbidden by God. The first thing we should notice is that decisions about whether or not a certain practice like this will be retained or introduced, are not to be made whimsically, arbitrarily, or independently, apart from careful reflection and fraternal consultation. Such decisions are decisions of “the community of God.” And as the larger Church does consider such matters, by means of its various mechanisms of fraternal deliberation, it is to do so with a clear and informed perception of the purpose of such practices. If an under-educated individual does not understand the reason for a certain inherited practice, this does not mean that there is no reason, and this does not mean that the Church would not be hindered in its mission by the removal of the practice.
We can appreciate the systematic presentation of the Formula of Concord in particular regarding the matter of adiaphora, as a guide for our own consideration of these matters. An adiaphoron is, in principle, acceptable and desirable for use among God’s people when it isbeneficial for “good order, Christian discipline, evangelical decorum, and the building up of the Church.” But before we go any further in applying these criteria to the ceremonial and liturgical issues of our day, we need to make sure that we accurately grasp how the Formula actually intends its use of the term “adiaphora” to be understood. The Concordists themselves do not apply the concept of “adiaphora” as broadly as we often do. Martin Chemnitz provides us with the larger sixteenth-century lexical context for the Formula’s use of this specific term, in his Examination of the Council of Trent:
The ceremonies of the Mass are not all of one kind. For some have a divine command and examples of Scripture that they should be done at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, being as it were essential, e.g., to take bread and the cup in the public assembly, to bless, distribute, eat, drink, proclaim the death of the Lord. Some indeed do not have an express command of God, that they must of necessity be done thus in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, nevertheless they are in their nature good and godly if they are used rightly for edification, such as psalms, readings from Scripture, godly prayers and giving of thanks, confession of the Creed, etc. Some are per se superstitious and ungodly, for instance the sacrifice of the Mass for the living and the dead, invocation of the saints, satisfaction for the souls in purgatory, the private Mass, consecration of salt, blessing of water, etc. Some ceremonies indeed are adiaphora, such as vestments, vessels, ornaments, words, rites, and things which are not against the Word of God. Things which are of the first kind must of necessity be observed, for they belong to the substance of the Lord’s Supper. Of the things that belong to the second and fourth kind, many which make for the edification of people are observed in our churches without infringing on Christian liberty. The third kind, however, being superstitious and godless, has deservedly, rightly, and of necessity been abrogated and done away with.34
Chemnitz divides the various kinds of religious “ceremonies” into four distinct categories. His first category pertains to those ceremonies that are commanded by God, and that therefore cannot be dispensed with. Christian worship is not a matter of Quaker-like mysticism. Jesus has told us physically to do certain things in the administration of the means of grace, and this sacramental doing is a matter of sacred ceremony — that is, outward actions that accompany the spoken Word, according to the Lord’s institution and command. Chemnitz’s third category pertains to those ceremonies that are inherently wrong, and that therefore must not be used. Such ceremonies enact, or invariably testify to, things that God’s Word forbids. But there are also two remaining categories, and not just one.
Chemnitz’s second category pertains to certain historic usages that admittedly are not, in themselves, commanded by God. But these usages are so well established in the church, and are so widely recognized as serving inherently good and godly purposes in worship, that there would be hardly any conceivable reason why a faithful pastor would want to do away with them – at least if his goal and desire would be to have a worship service that edifies his congregation with the unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ. Ceremonies of this category invariably testify to the truth of God’s Word, and always serve the purposes of a proper liturgical theology as based on that Word. Hence the inevitable impression that would be left among informed observers by the removal of such ceremonies, is that those who are removing them are thereby rejecting the truth and the proper theology that everyone understands them to represent. And so, even though the Bible does not explicitly command the use of an order of service that employs “psalms, readings from Scripture, godly prayers and giving of thanks, [and] confession of the Creed,” this kind of liturgical format has become, for all practical purposes, virtually “untouchable” in an orthodox church.
In Chemnitz’s Examination, the concept of adiaphora does not come into view until his fourth category. This category pertains to the kind of ceremonies that can with little fanfare be adjusted or revised, diminished or increased, according to the needs and circumstances of the church. Ceremonial changes of this nature, if they are implemented in an orderly and pastorally-responsible way and with the right motives, will not be a cause of scandal or offense, or give a testimony of heterodoxy to those who witness such changes.
According to this category of genuine adiaphora, a pastor can either chant or speak his parts of the service. As he conducts the service, he can wear a white alb, a black talar, or a colored chasuble. He can administer the Lord’s Supper with vessels of silver or gold, of glass or porcelain. Communicants can kneel or stand. They can make the sign of the cross and bow when they are dismissed and depart, or not. The service can be comprised of plainsong canticles, or of metered hymns, or of a combination of both.
However, Chemnitz would not have considered it to be a proper application of the principle of adiaphora to revamp totally the whole concept and framework of Christian worship. He would not have considered it to be a proper example of evangelical freedom to get rid of an historically-based order of service that accentuates and underscores the means of grace; and to replace it with a format that arises from, and reflects, the entertainment and variety-show culture, the restaurant and coffee-shop culture, the talk-show and psycho-therapy culture, or the big-business and corporate culture. One of the important points that is made by the Formula is that “useless and foolish spectacles” are not to be counted among the adiaphora. They are inherently contrary to the requirement for “evangelical decorum” that applies to any Lutheran worship service. Frivolous gimmicks that are introduced into the worship services of a church, for the deliberate purpose of creating a casual and unserious atmosphere, are beyond the pale of what is acceptable. They offend the pious, and disrupt the larger unity of the Church.
It is often thought that such things should be done by a church that is interested in outreach, so that any unbelievers who might be present, and who might be “put off” by too much reverence, would not be made to feel uncomfortable in worship. But unbelievers should actually feel a little uncomfortable in a gathering that honors the First Commandment, and that is comprised of worshipers who humbly recognize the holiness of the God Whom they are therein enjoined to fear, love, and trust above all things. Pastors and worship leaders who intentionally try to craft a service that does not reflect and promote the fear of God, love for God, and trust in God above all things — whatever their motive may be — are thereby sinning against the First Table of the Law.
The Epistle to the Hebrews gives us this instruction: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28, NIV). In the New Testament era God does not prescribe for His people a detailed ritual such as He did for the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. But even in the New Testament era there still is such a thing as “acceptable” worship. And this means that there is also such a thing as unacceptable worship. Worship that is irreverent is unacceptable. Worship that is not permeated by sound Biblical doctrine, and that does not convey sound Biblical doctrine in its songs and texts to those who are present, is also unacceptable.
Christians do not gather chiefly for the purpose of telling God what they think or how they feel, but for the purpose of listening in faith to what God has to tell them, and for the purpose of learning from God how to respond to His Word — in prayers of petition, praise, and thanksgiving that have been molded and shaped by that Word. As St. Paul writes: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16, NIV). In keeping with this emphasis on the centrality of Christ’s Word in worship — and in the ceremonial and hymnic forms that are used in worship — the Augsburg Confession declares that…
…the Mass is retained among us and is celebrated with the greatest reverence. Almost all the customary ceremonies are also retained, except that German hymns, added for the instruction of the people, are interspersed here and there among the Latin ones. For ceremonies are especially needed in order to teach those who are ignorant.35
The Apology likewise affirms that…
…we do not abolish the Mass but religiously retain and defend it. Among us the Mass is celebrated every Lord’s day and on other festivals, when the Sacrament is made available to those who wish to partake of it, after they have been examined and absolved. We also keep traditional liturgical forms, such as the order of readings, prayers, vestments, and other similar things. … Ceremonies should be observed both so that people may learn the Scriptures and so that, admonished by the Word, they might experience faith and fear and finally even pray. For these are the purposes of the ceremonies. We keep the Latin for the sake of those who learn and understand it. We also use German hymns in order that the [common] people might have something to learn, something that will arouse their faith and fear.36
…we gladly keep the ancient traditions set up in the Church because they are useful and promote tranquillity… We can claim that the public liturgy in the Church is more dignified among us than among the opponents. … Many among us celebrate the Lord’s Supper every Lord’s day after they are instructed, examined, and absolved. The children chant the Psalms in order to learn them; the people also sing in order either to learn or to pray.37
None of this should be taken to mean that there is one and only one order of service that every Lutheran church or church body must follow. There is more than one way to worship God acceptably with reverence and awe. The Confessors of our church knew this, not only as a matter of Scriptural doctrine, but also by their own experience. Luther and Melanchthon — who authored several of our Confessional documents — were, of course, members of the church in Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony. In its public worship the church of Wittenberg employed an order of service that was based on the ancient and medieval Latin Mass. This description of a typical service in Wittenberg — written by an unsympathetic observer — comes from the year 1536:
At the seventh hour we returned to the city church and observed by which rite they celebrated the Liturgy; namely thus: First, the Introit was played on the organ, accompanied by the choir in Latin, as in the mass offering. Indeed, the minister meanwhile proceeded from the sacristy dressed sacrificially [i.e. in traditional mass vestments] and, kneeling before the altar, made his confession together with the assisting sacristan. After the confession he ascended to the altar to the book that was located on the right side, according to papist custom. After the Introit the organ was played and the Kyrie eleison sung in alternation by the boys. When it was done the minister sang Gloria in excelsis, which song was completed in alternation by the organ and choir. Thereafter the minister at the altar sang Dominus vobiscum, the choir responding Et cum spiritu tuo. The Collect for that day followed in Latin, then he sang the Epistle in Latin, after which the organ was played, the choir following with Herr Gott Vater, wohn uns bei. When it was done the Gospel for that Sunday was sung by the minister in Latin on the left side of the altar, as is the custom of the adherents of the pope. After this the organ played, and the choir followed with Wir glauben all an einen Gott. After this song came the sermon, …delivered on the Gospel for that Sunday… After the sermon the choir sang Da pacem domine, followed by the prayer for peace by the minister at the altar, this in Latin as well.
The Communion followed, which the minister began with the Lord’s Prayer sung in German. Then he sang the words of the Supper, and these in German with his back turned toward the people, first those of the bread, which, when the words had been offered, he then elevated to the sounding of bells; likewise with the chalice, which he also elevated to the sounding of bells. Immediately communion was held. … During the communion the Agnus Dei was sung in Latin. The minister served the bread in common dress [in a cassock?] but [he served] the chalice dressed sacrificially [i.e. in mass vestments]. They followed the singing of the Agnus Dei with a German song: Jesus Christus [unser Heiland] and Gott sei gelobet. After the sermon the majority of the people departed. … The minister ended the Communion with a certain thanksgiving sung in German. He followed this, facing the people, with the Benediction, singing “The Lord make his face to shine on you, etc.” And thus was the mass ended.38
Jacob Andreae, a coauthor of the Formula of Concord, was from Tübingen, in the Duchy of Württemberg. The church of Württemberg did not use an order of service that was based on the Latin Mass. But it also did not use a “made-up” service that was invented from scratch by the Reformers of that region, without historical roots. Rather, the Württembergers used an order of service that was based on the medieval Preaching Service. Andreae himself, together with colleagues from the theological faculty at Tübingen, described this service in their 1577 correspondence with the Patriarch of Constantinople:
The All-Holy Communion is celebrated among us today with a minimum of ceremonial. The church assembles at an appointed time. Hymns are sung. Sermons are preached concerning the benefits of Christ for mankind. Again, hymns are sung. An awesome exhortation is read, which in part explains the words of institution of the Most-Holy Supper, and in part demands that each person should prepare for a worthy communion. A general but sincere confession of sins is made. Forgiveness is publicly pronounced. With devout prayers we ask the Lord to make us partakers of the heavenly gifts and benefits. The Words of Institution of the sacrament are read, after which the congregation approaches with reverence and receives (offered by the holy minister) the body and the blood of Christ. Again we give thanks to God in prescribed words for the heavenly gifts. Finally, the holy minister of God says the blessing over the assembled congregation, and all are dismissed to go to their homes.39
These two orders of service were certainly different from each other. In the sixteenth century and later, most Lutherans followed an order of service similar to that of Wittenberg. The “Common Service” (Divine Service Setting 3, LSB), familiar in American Lutheran history, is an heir of this “majority” tradition. But some Lutherans in the sixteenth century and later followed an order of service similar to that of Württemberg. Wittenberg used a fuller and more elaborate ritual, with a richer ceremonial. Württemberg used a more streamlined and simplified ritual, with a minimized ceremonial.
But, what these orders of service had in common was that they were both rooted in the earlier tradition of the Church’s worship, and therefore testified to Lutheranism’s continuity with the Church of all ages; they both focused the attention of the worshipers on the means of grace and faithfully conveyed the means of grace to the people; and they were both serious and dignified in spirit, without any frivolous or irreverent elements. There was, then, a fundamental agreement between them in form and presentation, even as they reflected — in what they each taught and confessed — a fundamental agreement also in the underlying doctrine and practice of the churches that worshiped by means of these orders.40
V.
Among the articles of faith that are to be taught in and through the liturgy and its ceremonies, is the essential point of Lutheran ecclesiology that “One Holy Church will remain forever” — to quote again from the Augsburg Confession. This is why the Reformers are so adamant in demonstrating and defending their unity with the Church of the apostles and ancient Fathers, and their adherence to the evangelical teachings of the apostles and the Fathers.
Some Lutherans in their anti-Roman polemics actually end up sounding like Mormons in their seeming willingness to agree with the Romanist accusation that the Lutheran Reformers established a “new” church that was not in continuity with the Church of pre-Reformation times. But this is heresy! We should absolutely refuse to be tarred by this. In our desire to preserve and confess the doctrinal unity on this point that God wants us to have, we will do what we can — in the testimony that we give with our lips, and in the testimony that we give with our ceremonies — to refute this accusation, and to show forth in word and deed that it is not true.
Pr. Webber preaching in Ukraine.
If there would be a weighing and an evaluating of old ceremonies and of potential new ceremonies, Lutherans would be expected to embrace a “preferential option” for the old ceremonies. An old ceremony and a new ceremony may each be able, with equal effectiveness, to teach and reinforce a certain Scriptural truth. But the old ceremony, by its very oldness, is also able to teach and reenforce the fact that this Scriptural truth is what faithful Christians of all times have believed. The newness of a new ceremony severely diminishes the ability of such a new ceremony to impress upon people a sense of the oldness of the doctrine that it is devised to symbolize.
There is indeed a catholic and historic spirit in true Lutheranism that is lacking in Calvinism and in the various Protestant sects within Christendom that Calvinism has spawned over the centuries. Sasse reminds us that…
…Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in that it lays great emphasis on the fact that the Evangelical Church is none other than the medieval Catholic Church purged of certain heresies and abuses. The Lutheran theologian acknowledges that he belongs to the same visible Church to which Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine and Tertullian, Athanasius and Irenaeus once belonged. The orthodox Evangelical Church is the legitimate continuation of the medieval Catholic Church, not the church of the Council of Trent…, which renounced evangelical truth when it rejected the Reformation. For the orthodox Evangelical Church is really identical with the orthodox Catholic Church of all times. And just as the very nature of the Reformed Church emphasizes its strong opposition to the medieval church, so the very nature of the Lutheran Church requires it to go to the farthest possible limit in its insistence on its solidarity and identity with the Catholic Church. It was no mere ecclesiastico-political diplomacy which dictated the emphatic assertion in the Augsburg Confession that the teachings of the Evangelicals were identical with those of the orthodox Catholic Church of all ages, and no more was it romanticism or false conservatism which made our church anxious to retain as much of the old canonical law as possible, and to cling tenaciously to the old forms of worship.41
It does not surprise us, then, that there is a noticeable convergence between some of the outward forms of the Lutheran Church and some of the outward forms of the Catholic Church — and indeed of any other church (Anglican or Orthodox) that, like ours, deliberately cultivates an identity of “connectedness” to the historic Church of past centuries.
We do have an obligation to confess the pure and whole truth and thereby to cultivate our unity with other Lutherans who with us confess this truth. And this means that in our ceremonial usages we will not employ customs and practices that testify to, and teach, the distinctive errors of “the papist religion.” Neither will we employ customs and practices that testify to, and teach, the distinctive errors of Protestant sectarianism, and that would make people feel in our worship services as if they were in a typical Baptist or “evangelical” church and not in a Lutheran church.
But returning to the matter at hand, not everything that is in Rome is of Rome. We need not refrain from ceremonially accentuating those articles of faith that we actually do to some degree still share with Rome.42 In fact, since the Protestant “evangelical movement” poses much more of a threat to our existence in America than does the Church of Rome at this time in history, we should probably accentuate even more than in the past those sacramental and incarnational distinctives of our confession that set us apart from the enthusiasm and rationalism of American Evangelicalism. At the very least, we certainly would not deliberately try to make ourselves look and sound like the “evangelicals” by adopting their distinctive usages and ceremonies. Such a way of proceeding would directly threaten the unity in doctrine that God wants the orthodox to maintain among themselves and together to show forth to the world.
In part (ostensibly) for the sake of outreach and evangelism, and in part also to overcome their own feeling of being foreign misfits in the New World, this tactic was tried in the past by many American Lutherans in the first half of the nineteenth century. And it was an unmitigated disaster. Over time the Confessional convictions of these Lutherans had been diminished and weakened through the internal influence of Pietism and Rationalism. And under the external influence of Puritanism and Revivalism, they finally sought to reshape themselves into the image of what was then the popular piety and spirituality of American Protestantism. All the while, of course, they thought that they were still Lutherans. But in the sense in which the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church define what Lutheranism is, they were not. William Julius Mann recounted this sad history in 1855:
Gradually a desire manifested itself to gain popularity for the Lutheran Church in this country. The hard dogmatical knots of the old Lutheran oak were to give way under the Puritan plane. The body was deprived of its bones and its heart, and the empty skin might be filled with whatever was most pleasing, if only the Lutheran name was retained! The statement of the seventh article of the Augsburg Confession, that “unto the true unity of the Church it is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by men, should be everywhere alike,” was most extensively used, and in the desire to make the Lutheran Church as much as possible like others, her leaders were much more ready to adopt foreign elements than to retain her own distinctive features. Thus the Liturgy, the ancient lessons of the Gospels and Epistles, the festivals of the Church Year, the gown, and other usages were given up, in order that as little as possible might be seen of these Lutheran peculiarities. Hoping to gain others, they lost themselves. The Lutheran Church had given away her own spirit, her own original life and character.43
August L. Graebner wanted to make sure that the more recently-arrived Lutheran immigrants, in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, would learn the lessons of this tragic history, so that it would not be repeated among them and their descendants. On the occasion of the publication of a new Lutheran Agenda in the English language in 1881, he therefore said:
…it appears to be our duty to aid in spreading a knowledge of the rich treasures of our Lutheran church among those in our country who are unacquainted with German. … A good liturgy, the beautiful Lutheran service form part of those treasures. Church usages, except in the case when the confession of a divine truth is required, are indeed adiaphora. But they are nevertheless not without an importance of their own. Congregations that adopt the church usages of the sects that surround them, will be apt to conform to their doctrines also, more easily and quickly than those that retain their Lutheran ceremonies. We should in Lutheran services, also when held in the English language, as much as possible use the old Lutheran forms, though they be said to be antiquated and not suiting this country. We will mention here the words of a pious Lutheran duchess, Elisabeth Magdalena of Brunswick-Luneburg. Her court-chaplain [Hieronymus] Prunner relates as follows: “Although her ladyship well knew that the ceremonies and purposes of this chapter (at which Prunner officiated) must have the appearance and repute of popery with some people, she still remembered the instructions which that dear and venerable man, Luther, had once given to her father [Joachim II, Elector of Brandenburg] concerning such ceremonies. I remember in particular that her ladyship several times told me that she did not desire at these present times to begin discontinuing any of those church usages, since she hoped that so long as such ceremonies continued, Calvinistic temerity would be held back from the public office of the church.”44
We should value our Lutheran ceremonies as testimonies to and reminders of our distinctive Lutheran doctrine. So, too, should we value our Lutheran hymns, as teachers and inculcators of our distinctive Lutheran doctrine — especially for the sake of the impressionable youth of the church. Our Lutheran fathers accordingly said this in 1916:
The songs of Lutheran children and youth should be essentially from Lutheran sources. The Lutheran Church is especially rich in songs and hymns of sound doctrine, high poetical value and fitting musical setting. They express the teachings and spirit of the Lutheran Church and help one to feel at home in this Church. Of course, there are songs of high merit and sound Biblical doctrine written by Christians in other denominations also, and some of these could and should find a place in a Lutheran song treasury. But the bulk of the songs in a Lutheran song book should be drawn from Lutheran sources. We should teach our children to remain in the Lutheran Church instead of to sing themselves into some Reformed sect.45
As much as is possible, the aesthetic character of the location and environment of worship should also reflect, and harmonize with, the character of the worship that is taking place there, and should be an aid in teaching the faith that is taught in that worship. According to Frederick H. Knubel, the Lutheran Church is justified in recommending a liturgy to its people because she has a definite faith to express. It is a distinctive faith, and is great enough to mould all of life. The places of worship are also places for the proclamation of that faith. Everything connected with the sanctuary and with the mode of worship should be shaped so as to express most clearly, most beautifully, and most effectively what the Church confesses to be the truth. It is evident therefore that greatest care is necessary so that the building and that which takes place within it shall be in harmony with the faith of the Church.46
VI.
In the midst of all the discouragements that surround us in our increasingly post-Christian society, a Lutheran pastor can be greatly tempted to turn away from that which is pure and true, and to embrace instead that which seems to work more quickly and effectively in filling the pews of a church. But the kingdom of God — the spiritual kingdom of faith and forgiveness — is not enduringly built by such compromises and evasions. In our fraternal love for each other, we should remind each other of this. And in so doing, as we sustain each other in our weakness, we will, by God’s grace, be endeavoring thereby to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
We can also derive at least some comfort from the knowledge that these temptations are not new, and that they have been endured by our brother pastors in America and elsewhere, under the cross, for many generations. George Henry Gerberding penned these still relevant words over a century ago:
…in almost every community there are distractions and vexations from those who claim to have a superior grade of piety. Because of the skepticism that permeates our atmosphere; because faith in Christ, in His Word, His church, and His means of grace, has been so utterly weakened, if not lost; because faith in man, in self, in one’s own ability to make himself acceptable to God, has grown to such colossal proportions, therefore extremes meet and fanaticism joins hands with rationalism. Immersionists, revivalists, sanctificationists, Adventists, and healers of every hue, name, and grade, are abroad in the land. They invade the school-house, the barn, and the woods. They spread their tents on the common and on the vacant lot in village, town, and city. Each one offers a new way of salvation. All cry: “Lo, here is Christ,” or, “Lo, there.” They all claim that the church which teaches the old doctrines and walks in the old ways is a failure. They unsettle the minds of the uninformed and the unreflecting. They bring heartache and sorrow to the earnest pastor. All this skepticism, uncertainty, and experimenting has unfortunately unsettled only too many pastors in the churches around us. These pastors themselves have lost faith, more or less, in the divinely ordained means of grace. They are casting about for new means and methods by which to reach and hold men. They are experimenting with all sorts of novelties and attractions. Their churches and services are becoming more and more places of entertainment. They try to outbid and outdo each other in sensations calculated to draw. And so the church, like Samson of old, is shorn of her locks, and is degraded to make sport for the Philistines of the world. No true Lutheran pastor can stoop to such prostitution of his office and of his church. But he suffers from the misdeeds of others. His people are influenced by their surroundings. Some are drawn away from him, others make trouble in his own church. And so he is caused to grieve for the hurt of Joseph, and sighs, “for the hurt of my people am I hurt” (Jer. viii. 21).47
In 1929, Paul E. Kretzmann refuted the claim that was already being made then, that Lutheran hymns are too hard to sing:
We must take note also of a most deplorable tendency of our times, namely, that of preferring the shallow modern “Gospel anthem” to the classical hymns of our Church. The reference is both to the text and to the tunes in use in many churches. On all sides the criticism is heard that the old Lutheran hymns are “too heavy, too doctrinal; that our age does not understand them.” Strange that the Lutherans of four centuries and of countless languages could understand and appreciate them, even as late as a generation ago! Is the present generation less intelligent or merely more frivolous?48
And in 1932, Walter E. Buszin, then of the (little) Norwegian Synod, rebuked much of American Lutheranism — and perhaps some of the Norwegian Synod’s own brand of Americanized Lutheranism — in these words:
The reason why so much that is un-Lutheran in spirit and expression is sung in our churches is because there are some in our circles who no longer appreciate the beauty of the Lord as it is expressed so beautifully and so nobly in the Lutheran hymn. It is stylish to join in with the crowd and crowds like what is rather trivial. It is hard to be different and somewhat separate; unionism is in the air and distinct Lutheranism is unpopular; this spirit is reflected in the music which some of our own circles prefer. Some of the sectarian bodies have been forced to realize that they have lost out through their shallow music; but there are people in our circles who insist on learning through their own experiences and not through the experience of others. This is certainly a foolhardy attitude, but what makes the situation all the more serious is the fact that it affects not only an individual here and there, but the Church at large.49
Even the idea of using a projection screen in worship and as a supplement to preaching, with film clips and other images, was first floated in American Protestantism about 80 years ago. And it was rejected as un-Lutheran by Kretzmann. In a review of a book published in 1932 by The Westminster Press — which advocated this — Kretzmann noted that…
The scope of this book is more exactly shown by its subtitle: How to Use Motion Pictures and Projected Still Pictures in Worship, Study, and Recreation. The author rightly says: “With the addition of motion-pictures, projected still pictures, prints, photographs, models, maps, school journeys and reproduced sound, the educator has set out to stimulate a wealth of experiences to be used in the classroom to facilitate the understanding of the verbal symbols in books” (p. 14). We should like to emphasize the words “in the classroom” and add “in the church hall,” because visual education has proved an invaluable aid in the work of our parish-school, Sunday-schools, young people’s societies, and the various auxiliary organizations of the congregation. Every pastor who desires to have accurate information concerning the use of visual education helps will be glad to use the information contained in this book. We cannot endorse the larger part of Chapter V, on “The Use of Visual Aids in Worship,” because the doctrinal and expository sermons of the Lutheran Church will rarely require, in most cases not even permit, the use of pictures. There are other dangers connected with the indiscriminate use of visual aids, especially if the emotional element is stressed.50
VII.
Lutherans should certainly be concerned about outreach to the lost. Indeed, a Lutheran who does not want to find ways to confess Christ to his unchurched neighbors, or who is not eager to bring the Gospel to people who do not yet know their Savior, is not much of a Lutheran. But a commitment to preserve pure doctrine through the use of pure worship forms is not in any way incompatible with this concern. In fact, it is more compatible with this concern than are those shortsighted pragmatic tactics that seek to lure unbelievers into the church by worldly “bait and switch” deceptions.
The advice and encouragement that we need, to reach out to a fallen world as Lutherans — which is what we are — is also not new. It is the same advice that has been given for many generations to pastors who wish to remain faithful to their Lord and to their calling. Over a century ago John Schaller wrote these words of encouragement in the specific context of promoting cross-cultural outreach and church-planting on the part of German-American Lutherans among their English-speaking fellow citizens:
The first care, then, of all who work in the field of English Mission, pastors and laymen alike, ought ever to be that they steadfastly adhere to the biblical doctrine in all its parts. Lutheran hymns, Lutheran liturgies, Lutheran prayers, above all Lutheran sermons ought to be heard wherever our missionary work is carried on. True Lutheranism need not fear any criticism. It has stood the test of centuries, and no modern weapon of offence will subvert it. It is an impregnable fortress. Be not afraid, then, to show its beauties to all who come to hear. They expect to be treated to something new in our churches, and they ought not to be disappointed. To follow the example set by sectarian clergymen, to sermonize on anything else rather than upon questions of doctrine, or to fill the hearers’ ears with weak generalizations and pasture them on fine, poetic language alone, would be worse than folly. To make a good impression, to effect some real, living good, solid meat must be offered, which alone can satisfy the soul’s desires. Emphasize doctrine, if you would accomplish your aim. Else why should we expend money and labor, only to do what others may do as well? … Having laid a good foundation, we may hope to build up congregations [that are] really Lutheran. Having sown good, living seed, we may look forward to a rich harvest. We shall reap the first-fruits; they will ripen before our eyes. Our English congregations will give proof of spiritual life. In the great battle against worldliness we shall find them fighting shoulder to shoulder with their elder German sisters. From them, streams of living waters will flow, and their influence will be widespread. For is not this promised as a certain effect of THE WORD?51
Lutheran pastors who look with envying eyes upon the large numbers in attendance at the heterodox churches of our land, and who think that their own attendance will increase if they imitate the worship practices of those churches, need to realize that such churches worship the way they do because they believe the way they do. The theology of Arminian churches in particular requires them to devise techniques of persuading and enticing people to make a “decision” to turn their hearts toward God, and to follow Christ. The praise songs that one finds in such churches, which “market” God as one who is available and able to satisfy the felt needs of religious seekers, fit exactly with the false doctrine of such churches.
Even when such songs do not explicitly teach this false doctrine, one should notice that in the majority of cases they do not teach very much sound doctrine either. Most of the time the words of praise songs are not really being used to teach much of anything. With mantra-like repetitions of innocuous phrases from the Bible, wed to a musical style that appeals directly to the physiological pulsations of the human body, the words of such songs are being used instead to manipulate the will and the emotions of those who sing them. How can Lutherans imitate any of that and still remain Lutheran? The Revivalists and Pentecostals who invented the genre of the praise song knew exactly what they were doing, governed as they were by their sincerely-held but erroneous doctrines of original sin and free will, conversion and faith. As we put the best construction on the actions of Lutherans who introduce such songs into their churches, we would have to say that they naïvely do not know what they are doing.52
What goes on in the popular “evangelical” megachurches of our day is not theologically neutral. Heterodox people go to heterodox churches because they like the heterodoxy that they find there. They like churches where the focus of attention is on them: on entertaining them, and on satisfying their needs as they define those needs. We should be saddened by their embracing of such heterodoxy, and we should wish and pray that they would be turned away from this wrong thinking. But if such heterodox Christians visit an orthodox Lutheran service, and decide that they do not like it, the fundamental problem is not in the orthodox service. The fundamental problem is in the heterodox visitors. Indeed, the orthodox evangelical doctrine that is embedded in a Lutheran service is actually their only hope, if they would only believe it instead of the fluff that they currently believe. It should not be discarded for their sake. It should instead be preserved and accentuated for their sake – and for the sake of the Lutherans who come regularly to their own church, to be renewed regularly in their orthodox evangelical faith by this orthodox evangelical doctrine.
It is the considered opinion of the present essayist that a full-bodied liturgical service, which preserves the intended flow and rhythm of the liturgy, and which is accompanied by purposeful ceremonial ornamentation, actually recommends itself to the church as a better instrument for congregational worship — and for outreach — than a more “low-church” option. We do have to admit that in some corners of conservative Lutheranism in America, a way of conducting the service has developed that can fairly be called “boring.” Ministers plod through the texts of the printed order with little sense of the grandeur and pageantry of the liturgy, or of the organic and logical flow of the successive parts of the service. The flow of the service is also broken up by the frequent insertion of wordy rubrical announcements about what is coming next, what page things are on, etc.
Many today have proposed that this “boring” way of conducting the service be replaced by an “entertaining” way of conducting it — either by substituting for the Church’s liturgy a locally-produced flashy concoction each week; or by seeking to “enliven” the service, and make it more “meaningful,” through a stronger intrusion of the pastor’s personality into the conduct of the service. In contrast we would propose that this “boring” way of conducting the service be replaced instead by an intriguing way of conducting it — that is, by a way of leading the Lord’s people in the worship of almighty God that testifies to the fact that something special and other-worldly is there taking place.
Any unchurched guests who may be present for such a sacred gathering would not be expected to be able to grasp everything that is going on. A desire to change the liturgy so as to make it immediately understandable in all respects to first-time visitors is a misguided desire. As Christians over time mature in their faith, the liturgy should be something that they grow into, and not something that they quickly grow out of. But first-time visitors, even if they are unbelievers, can still be intrigued by a well-done liturgy that they do not immediately understand in all particulars. They can tell that something special and other-worldly is indeed taking place — something unlike anything else they have ever experienced — and this can draw them back again, to learn more.
On the basis of the natural knowledge of God, even an unbeliever would sense that if there is a God to be worshiped, those who do worship Him will be serious about it. To the extent that a public worship service can serve an evangelistic purpose, then, the best way for it to do so is for that service to exude an attitude of joyful yet sublime reverence, as well as deep respect for all that is holy. An unregenerated person in his spiritual darkness does not yet know where to find God. But he does at least know that if God can be found anywhere, it will likely not be in a setting or atmosphere of frivolity and silliness. As we set our evangelistic sights on the unbelieving nations, with a desire to introduce to them the true worship of the true God, we are to be guided by the exhortations of the Psalmist:
Sing to the LORD, bless His name;
tell of his salvation from day to day.
Declare His glory among the nations,
His marvelous works among all the peoples!
For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
He is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
but the LORD made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before Him;
strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.
Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name;
bring an offering, and come into His courts!
Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;
tremble before Him, all the earth! (Psalm 96:2-9, ESV)
An example of how a well-done liturgy can indeed make a salutary life-long impact on those who witness it is given in the reminiscences of Jacob Aall Ottesen Stub, as he recalls the experiences of his early childhood in services of Holy Communion conducted by his grandfather, a well-known nineteenth-century Norwegian Synod pastor:
My sainted grandfather, Jacob Aall Ottesen, always celebrated the Communion, robed in the colorful, and, as it seemed to me, beautiful vestments of the Lutheran Church. …he wore the narrow-sleeved cassock, with its long satin stole, and the white “ruff,” or collar. …he also wore the white surplice or cotta. As he stood reverentially before the altar with its lighted candles and gleaming silver, the old deacon, or verger, placed over his shoulders the scarlet, gold embroidered, silk chasuble. This ancient Communion vestment was shaped somewhat like a shield. As it was double, one side covered his back and the other his chest. Upon the side, which faced the congregation when he turned to the altar, was a large cross in gold embroidery; upon the other was a chalice of similar materials. As a child I instinctively knew that the most sacred of all observances of the Church was about to be witnessed. As grandfather turned to the altar and intoned the Lord’s Prayer and the words of consecration, with the elevation of the host and the chalice, I felt as if God was near. The congregation standing reverentially about those kneeling before the altar, made me think of Him who, though unseen, was in our midst. I forgot the old, cold church, with its bare walls, its home-made pews, and its plain glass windows. I early came to know some words of that service, such as: “This is the true Body, the true Blood of Christ”; “Forgiveness of sins”; “Eternal life.” I venture that all who, like me, early received such impressions of the Lord’s Supper, will approach the altar or the Communion with a reverence that time will but slowly efface.53
We know that as a preacher, Pastor Ottesen, throughout his life, clearly and consistently confessed the Church’s faith. But Pastor Ottesen confessed the Church’s faith also as a liturgical celebrant. In chant and song, through gesture and symbolism, he confessed the Church’s faith in the holiness of God, in the grandeur of God’s grace, in the sweetness of the Gospel of Christ, and in the dignity and mystery of Christ’s Sacrament. He made this good liturgical confession not only in what he said, but in how he said it; and in what he did as he said it. In these ways, Ottesen did his part “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Those who attended services at the sister congregations of Ottesen’s church elsewhere in the synod, and who were led in prayer and devotion by Ottesen’s brother pastors in those sister congregations, would no doubt have seen and heard the same sort of things that Ottesen’s little grandson saw and heard. And they, too, never would have forgotten what they saw and heard.
We close with these inspired and inspiring words from St. Paul the apostle: “Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:5-6, NKJV). Amen.
Rev. David Jay Webber
Phoenix, Arizona
The Confession of St. Peter, January 18, 2012
ADDENDUM I
Excerpted from C. F. W. Walther, “Explanation of Thesis XVIII, D, Adiaphora, of the book The True Visible Church,” in Essays for the Church (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1992), Vol. I, pp. 193-94.
We know and firmly hold that the character, the soul of Lutheranism, is not found in outward observances but in the pure doctrine. If a congregation had the most beautiful ceremonies in the very best order, but did not have the pure doctrine, it would be anything but Lutheran. We have from the beginning spoken earnestly of good ceremonies, not as though the important thing were outward forms, but rather to make use of our liberty in these things. For true Lutherans know that although one does not have to have these things (because there is no divine command to have them), one may nevertheless have them because good ceremonies are lovely and beautiful and are not forbidden in the Word of God. Therefore the Lutheran Church has not abolished “outward ornaments, candles, altar cloths, statues and similar ornaments” [Ap XXIV], but has left them free. The sects proceeded differently because they did not know how to distinguish between what is commanded, forbidden, and left free in the Word of God. We remind only of the mad actions of Carlstadt and of his adherents and followers in Germany and in Switzerland. We on our part have retained the ceremonies and church ornaments in order to prove by our actions that we have a correct understanding of Christian liberty, and know how to conduct ourselves in things which are neither commanded nor forbidden by God.
We refuse to be guided by those who are offended by our church customs. We adhere to them all the more firmly when someone wants to cause us to have a guilty conscience on account of them. The Roman antichristendom enslaves poor consciences by imposing human ordinances on them with the command: “You must keep such and such a thing!”; the sects enslave consciences by forbidding and branding as sin what God has left free. Unfortunately, also many of our Lutheran Christians are still without a true understanding of their liberty. This is demonstrated by their aversion to ceremonies.
It is truly distressing that many of our fellow Christians find the difference between Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism in outward things. It is a pity and dreadful cowardice when a person sacrifices the good ancient church customs to please the deluded American denominations just so they won’t accuse us of being Roman Catholic! Indeed! Am I to be afraid of a Methodist, who perverts the saving Word, or be ashamed in the matter of my good cause, and not rather rejoice that they can tell by our ceremonies that I do not belong to them?
It is too bad that such entirely different ceremonies prevail in our Synod, and that no liturgy at all has yet been introduced in many congregations. The prejudice especially against the responsive chanting of pastor and congregations is of course still very great with many people – this does not, however, alter the fact that it is very foolish. The pious church father Augustine said, “Qui cantat, bis orat – He who sings prays twice.” This finds its application also in the matter of the liturgy. Why should congregations or individuals in the congregation want to retain their prejudices? How foolish that would be! For first of all it is clear from the words of St. Paul (1 Cor. 14:16) that the congregations of his time had a similar custom. It has been the custom in the Lutheran Church for 250 years. It creates a solemn impression on the Christian mind when one is reminded by the solemnity of the divine service that one is in the house of God, in childlike love to their heavenly Father, also give expression to their joy in such a lovely manner.
We are not insisting that there be uniformity in perception or feeling or taste among all believing Christians – neither dare anyone demand that all be minded as he. Nevertheless, it remains true that the Lutheran liturgy distinguishes Lutheran worship from the worship of other churches to such an extent that the houses of worship of the latter look like lecture halls in which the hearers are merely addressed or instructed, while our churches are in truth houses of prayer in which Christians serve the great God publicly before the world.
Uniformity of ceremonies (perhaps according to the Saxon Church order published by the Synod, which is the simplest among the many Lutheran church orders) would be highly desirable because of its usefulness. A poor slave of the pope finds one and same form of service, no matter where he goes, by which he at once recognizes his church.
With us it is different. Whoever comes from Germany without a true understanding of the doctrine often has to look for his church for a long time, and many have already been lost to our church because of this search. How different it would be if the entire Lutheran church had a uniform form of worship! This would, of course, first of all yield only an external advantage, however, one which is by no means unimportant. Has not many a Lutheran already kept his distance from the sects because he saw at the Lord’s Supper they broke the bread instead of distributing wafers?
The objection, “What would be the use of uniformity of ceremonies?”, was answered with the counter question, “What is the use of a flag on the battlefield?” Even though a soldier cannot defeat the enemy with it, he nevertheless sees by the flag where he belongs. We ought not to refuse to walk in the footsteps of our fathers. They were so far removed from being ashamed of the good ceremonies that they publicly confess in the passage quoted: “It is not true that we do away with all such external ornaments.”
ADDENDUM II
Excerpted from Paul E. Kretzmann, Christian Art in the Place and in the Form of Lutheran Worship (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), pp. 395-96.
Divine worship in the Christian Church is not an adiaphoron. The Lord expressly commands that His Word be heard, John 8, 47. He has only severe censure for those who forsake the Christian assemblies, Hebrews 10, 25. He expressly enjoins public prayer, 1 Timothy 2, 1. 2. 8. He graciously promises His divine presence at such assemblies, Matthew 18, 20. He records with approval the public services of the early Christians, Acts 2, 42-47.
But though He has prescribed the general content of public worship, though He is present in the sacramental acts of divine service, declaring and appropriating to the believers the means of grace, and though He graciously receives the sacrificial acts of the assembled congregation, in confession and prayer and offerings, He has not commanded a definite form or order of divine service. It is a matter of Christian liberty whether a congregation wishes one or many prayers, one or several hymns, one or two sermons or homilies, whether the chief assembly be held in the morning or in the evening, whether the service be held on Sunday or on a ferial day.
To argue from these facts, however, that it is a matter of complete indifference as to how the form of Christian worship is constituted would be bringing liberty dangerously near to license. The Lord says: “Let all things be done decently and in order,” 1 Cor. 14, 40; and again: “Let all things be done for edification,” v. 26. It cannot really be a matter of indifference to a Christian congregation when the order of service used in her midst shows so much similarity to a heterodox order as to confuse visitors. One may hardly argue that such adiaphora do not matter one way or the other, when it has happened that a weak brother has been offended. And a Lutheran congregation cannot justly divorce herself, not only not from the doctrinal, but also not from the historical side of its Church. It is a matter of expediency, as well as of charity and edification, that every Lutheran pastor and every Lutheran congregation have outward significant symbols of the inner union, of the one mind and the one spirit.
In addition to these facts, there is the further consideration that the outward acts of the Church, commonly known by the appellation “the liturgy,” have a very definite significance, which, in many cases, renders the acts of public service true acts of confession of faith. And the symbolism of many of the Lutheran sacred acts, if correctly performed, is such that the beauty of these treasures of our Church may be brought to the joyful attention of our congregations.
This is true especially of the morning worship in the Lutheran Church, commonly known as The Service or The Communion. For this is not, as some people have supposed, a haphazard combination or a fortuitous conglomeration of heterogeneous material, but an artistic unit with definite and logical parts, a “spirituo-psychological, well-ordered, and articulated whole,” as [Friedrich] Lochner says [DerHauptgottesdienst, 41]. The order of service is a beautiful work of art, presenting a gradual climax of suchwonderful dignity and impressiveness that the mere presence in such a service should result in the edification of the faithful.
ADDENDUM III
Excerpted from J. Madsen, The Proper Communion Vestments (n.d.); an English abridgement of P. Severinsen, De rette Messeklaeder (1924). (edited for style by David Jay Webber)
The Reformation came and stirred up much of ancient date. Zwingli did away with the vestments, considering them – together with Altar, Candles, Crucifixes, and Organ – to be an expression of ungodliness. The South Germans followed him generally and constructed the Service, not along the ancient Order of the Communion, but on that of the Preaching Service of the Middle Ages.
It was different in Wittenberg. Luther built the Communion Service on the Order of the Mass, and he retained the Communion vestments, which were considered an entirely neutral matter – doing neither evil nor good. It is not improbable that to this came the consciousness that it would seem strange to appear before the altar in ordinary dress – therefore the accustomed vestments might well be retained. In the Order of the Mass of 1523 Luther says that the vestments may be used unhindered, when pomp and luxury are avoided…
This position was, however, the very opposite of that of the Fanatics, who maintained it as a law of God that these things and many others – where Luther allowed full liberty – should be prohibited. This placed Luther in the peculiar position that he was forced to emphasize liberty in these matters by emphasizing the liberty to continue the use of the ancient Communion vestments. This is what he does in his writing Againstthe Heavenly Prophets, which writing is from the fall of 1524. … In the Confession of the Communion (in 1528) – essentially against the same movements – he insisted on the same liberty, and in the German Mass of 1526 he retained the vestments, candles, and altar.
It was in full agreement with this that Bugenhagen retained the ancient vestments of the Church in the services in all the different countries where it became his duty to revise and order the services anew. …
This plainly shows the mind of the parish priest of Wittenberg, the great Reformation practician Bugenhagen. When the South Germans in 1536 came to Wittenberg to close the Wittenberg Concord, they were therefore greatly shocked by the Communion Service on Ascension Day. Wolfgang Musculus from Constance confided to his journal: There were pictures in the church, candles on the altar, and a priest in “papistic” clothes! The Introit was played on the organ while the choir sang in Latin – as was the custom of earlier days – while the priest having the celebration proceeded from the sacristy wearing vestments. They (the South Germans) complained to Bugenhagen…
The general conception of these things was that the use of the Communion vestments was typically and distinctly Lutheran as over against the black gown of the Calvinists. …
To form an idea of the richness of the vestments (Gewandtpragt) used in a German Lutheran church in the days of the strict Lutheran orthodoxy, we will go into the church of St. Nicolai in Leipzig about year 1650 (Paul Gerhardt, 1607-1676): The alb is used with amice, maniple and parurer, which latter the sexton’s wife must take off to launder and put on again. Then there is a surprising collection of chasubles for many varied occasions. For ordinary Sundays there are five: one green satin, one red patterned velvet, one dark red smooth velvet, one red satin, and one violet-brown velvet. Besides this there are sixteen most elaborate ones for festivals: For Advent one green velvet with Christ’s Entry in embroidery, for New Year one of gold cloth, for the Presentation one of white satin with a crucifix embroidered, for Palm Sunday one green with palm leaves, for Holy Thursday one of green satin, for Good Friday one of black velvet with a crucifix, for Easter Day (No. 2) one with a crucifix of pearls, for Whitsunday one of brown-red velvet with the Trinity in pearls and stones, and so on. There still remains a collection of “very old ones.” At the administration of the Sacrament four boys hold the Sacramental cloths, over which the Sacrament is handed to the communicants who pass the celebrating priests. The boys are in black cassocks with surplices over; but on festival days the boys wear “special cassocks of crimson velvet” donated by a widow.
Rationalism sold this whole collection in 1776. … The surplice, however, continued in use in Leipzig. The Evangelical churches in Nuremberg received orders in 1797 to deliver their collection of chasubles to the city treasury as a contribution to the taxes. In the churches of St. Sebald and St. Lawrence, the collection contained eighteen chasubles of very elaborate design, and many of them ornamented with pearls. There were also some Dalmatics. … The surplice was abolished in 1810, as it had already been in 1798 in Ansbach, to save laundry expenses. (This certainly is the way of Rationalism in all its modifications.)
…
In Sweden all the Communion vestments were retained. Archbishop Laurentius Petri would not have it otherwise. Charles IX was of a different turn of mind and in the parliament of 1618 made an attack on the Communion vestments. The leading churchmen would not hear anything of this, however. They remarked in their reply to the king that some of the old customs were retained at the Reformation so that everything in the churches might be done decently and in order, and also to show liberty in these indifferent matters. It was but fitting that a poor priest celebrating the Holy Communion should also have a fitting garment and not his outworn clothes, making him a laughing stock for people. Everyone would know that it was not done to follow the pope. That decided it – as far as Sweden is concerned.
In the inventory of the Cathedral Church at Westeraas in 1620 are mentioned: a number of copes, chasubles, dalmatics, albs, humeralia, stoles, and cinctures. It shows that the alb was worn with all its belongings. The surplice was worn at all churchly acts outside of the Communion.
The Danish Reformation was very like that of Wittenberg. The question of vestments was not up at all – neither with regard to the Romanists nor the Evangelicals mutually. … Hans Tausen (later Bishop) states in 1531 that he has so far observed all the usual ceremonies of the Mass and left all unchanged with regard to vestments, candles, elevation, etc. The Ordinants – the revised Order of the Danish Service, which bears the personal marks of Bugenhagen and Luther – prescribes “the usual Communion vestments, but the priest shall, when there is no Communion, close the service before a desk and not at the altar, neither shall he again put on the chasuble after the sermon” (Rørdam, Danish Church Laws).
The Bishop of Lund, Frantz Wormordsen, published, on this basis, an Altar-Book, Handbook for theProper Evangelical Mass (Malmo, 1539). In it we find the following, defending and explaining:
“The priest andthe altar should be clothed with the usual vestments, clean and orderly – not for any service that we can render God by it, nor that there in any manner is any special holiness in it in regard to the use and effect of the Sacrament. But this shall be done as a good, proper, and fitting custom, as an honor, not to God, but to the Christian congregation, and as a service of unity. So must everything in the Christian congregation be done honestly, decently, and in order – were it for nothing else than for the sake of the angels of God who are there present amongst us.” …
Rationalism impoverished the services in the use of the vestments as in everything else, but nothing was ordered discontinued. A later time, with a new spiritual revival, has also revived a new interest in the services of the sanctuary, and a renewed desire to revive the truly historic and beautiful service of the Lutheran Church of an earlier day. An intelligent Lutheran knows very well that while these things have an historic and oecumenic interest, and do not fail in inciting the devotional atmosphere of the Church Universal, they have nothing to do directly with the church of the Pope – only insofar as the popish church also is part of the Church Universal. …
The Lutheran and the Roman churches parted ways after the Reformation, but both continued the ancient and historic use of the chasuble. … The colors used for the Chasubles in the after-Reformation period were many. Numerous examples are found in the ancient churches – indeed a variegated collection… The material generally is silk, gold-cloth, gold-brocade. What applies to Denmark, applies equally to Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Many ancient treasures are preserved in Iceland. …
Lutheran customs were naturally criticized by the Reformed – but the times were conservative. Halle, however, was somewhat of an unquiet, restless corner. A Legal Dispute About the Sabbath was published in 1702 by a lawyer, Candidate Konrad Ludwig Wagner. Professor Johann Samuel Stryk, who was Praeses, gave it his sanction by an introductory Programma about the unfortunate observance of feast days, which he declared ought to be abolished. … Both men are forerunners of the period of Enlightenment (Rationalism). It is, according to the opinion of Wagner, a question whether it was right to continue to make use of the old “catholic” churches. No pictures should be tolerated. Crucifixes are idols. The church steeples remind us that we live among the Babylonians. The use of church bells should be discouraged, and the same applies to music. He has little use for the ordinary hymns. Chanting should by all means be prohibited. To decorate the altar and pulpit with velvet is a remnant from the days of Popery – as is the idea of using black in Lent! … Is the observance of all this not an absolutely unnecessary luxury?
Then he comes to the Communion vestments, which, he declares, are without a doubt from the days of Popery. They have been invented by the priests in order to be different from other people and thus secure authority. Chasubles, copes, girdles, collars, cassocks, cloaks with big sleeves – it all comes from the same common source, the Pope. … He (Wagner) advises that everything distinguishing the priest be abolished, but that if nothing else is, the chasuble must be, since it is manifestly from the days of the Pope. … From this he proceeds to attack the texts of the Church Year, which also are “Papistic.” …
After a couple of years things seem to have become quiet regarding this particular matter until Christian Gerber – after his death – appeared on the scene (in 1732) with his Historie der Kirchen-Ceremonien in Sachsen. The author died in 1731 as parish priest in Lockwisch, a little south of Dresden, andhis son published the book. Gerber was a Pietist with Reformed sympathies… He (Gerber) is much offended at the use of the Communion vestments. He tells how he, as a young priest in Schönberg, was obliged to use the Communion vestments because the patron of the church demanded it. He then goes on to say that during the 40 years he had been at Lockwisch he had never used the Communion vestments belonging to the church, and the congregation did not miss them any more. He then proceeds to treat the question of altar candles, which he thinks are an unreasonable Papistic remnant that certainly ought to be abolished.
…Gerber’s book…found…sympathetic readers, for instance Bishop Peder Hersleb. Neither is it improbable that this book of 1732 has some connection with what happened in many of the lands under the king of Prussia in 1733. Stryk and Wagner had encouraged the princes to legislate against the ceremonies of the church and the temptation was big enough where the prince was Reformed, to take hold of the “Papistry” among the Lutherans.
It was a Reformed king who declared the war against the Communion vestments of his Lutheran subjects. The royal house of Brandenburg, Prussia, was Reformed, while the population was largely Lutheran. The condition had already caused trouble, of which the experience of Paul Gerhardt bears ample proof. The war against the Communion vestments was declared by the peculiar soldier-king, Frederick William I, who ruled in a very autocratic fashion. Through a Decision of 1733 he “prohibited the remnants of Popery in the Lutheran Church: copes, Communion vestments, candles, Latin song, chants, and the sign of the cross.” Many priests sanctioned this step, but conservatism was also very strong. Many complained and counted the whole event a “betrayal of genuine and pure Lutheranism.” Many reports were also given of the disappointments of the congregations.
The brutal king repeated the decision in 1737, with the addition: “Should there be those who hesitate or who desire to make it a matter of conscience, we wish to make it known that we are ready to give them their demission.” At least one priest was discharged for refusal to submit. …
In a supplement [to V. E. Löscher’s Unschuldige Nachrichten] of 1737, page 81, we find the following:
… These things are admittedly not of any inner necessity, but they have become no insignificant mark of our church, and must therefore be safeguarded under these circumstances. The king gives to the Papists and the Jews full liberty in matters of worship. Should then the Evangelical Lutheran Christians not be able to obtain the same protection and liberty from their Landesvater — their king? …
One might think that the Pietists, with their dread of externalism, would wholeheartedly support the royal command. This is, however, not the case, for their chief city, Halle, was among those who protested against the royal dictatorship. The Danish Hallensian, Enevold Ewald, shows no sympathy in his account of the event. He says: “Some obeyed the royal decision, but a number of places protested, for instance, Königsberg, Pomerania, Magdeburg, Halle, etc. This led to a repetition and strengthening of the royal command in 1737. A number of priests chose to be dismissed from their office rather than make submission.”
Frederick [William] I was succeeded in 1740 by his son Frederick II. Immediately on ascending the throne, he issued a cabinet order allowing the churches and their priests full liberty in the matter of religious services. A number made use of the liberty granted. The Communion vestments were restored in Berlin and other places. A number of Prussian churches, such as the Maria Church in Danzig and the Cathedral Church of Brandenburg, possess even today the greatest collections of Communion vestments in Christendom. They are possibly not in use now. Some years of prohibition put the vestments out of use in many places, and the time of Frederick II was the time of Rationalism. … The time of Frederick II was not a time for pious sentiment. Rationalism flourished, and it had an infinite dread of all that was “mystic” or that was handed down from the “Middle Ages.” The use of the Communion vestments was decidedly “catholic” to the mind of Rationalism. Rationalism completed what the Reformed king of Prussia had begun.
The white surplice or alb is still in use in Leipzig and the surrounding country; in a couple of churches in Berlin, for instance, the Church of St. Nicolai where Paul Gerhardt was the parish priest; in Lausitz; in Weimar; in Königsberg, in Old Württemberg, and probably in other places. The chasuble was still used in Dresden in the early part of the nineteenth century. It was discontinued in Nuremberg in 1810, and about the same time in Hannover, Grimma, and Lübeck. At the outbreak of the Great War [World War I] there was probably no church in Germany where the chasuble was in use. Its use is retained by the Lutheran Slovaks.
Taken as a whole the German Lutheran priest appears at the present time in the black Calvinistic cloak handed him by the Reformed king of Prussia. The whole affair proved one tremendous defeat — a colossal yielding and giving up of typical Lutheran ways and customs. The condition was reached through protests and objections on the part of the Lutheran population, and through dismissals and threats of dismissal from office on the part of the king. And the force of the tyrant was superior.
It should always be remembered that the Calvinistic blackness of the clergy in the present-day German Lutheran churches – and in her daughters – is not only not Lutheran, but is a remnant and constant reminder of a period of the greatest helplessness and degradation of the German Lutheran people. The brutal Prussian king, followed by the overwhelming power of Rationalism, did accomplish one thing (insofar as externals are concerned). They shifted the German branch of the Lutheran Church, and her daughter churches, from her natural position among the great historic communions of Christendom, to a place among the sectarian, Calvinistic denominations. Her place there has so far been one of continued yielding in order to make herself acceptable. Lutheran in theory and increasingly Reformed in practice…
The original and typical apparel of the German Lutheran — as of all Lutheran clergy when officiating in the sanctuary — is not that of blackness and gloom, but the festive apparel of the historic church through the ages. We of Scandinavian ancestry cannot be too grateful for the better conditions prevailing in the Mother-Countries [of Scandinavia]. …
While these humiliations passed over the Lutheran church in Germany, things went peacefully and very dignified in the Scandinavian countries. … But the spirit of Rationalism spread its chilling and deadening influence everywhere. It also passed over the Northern countries. Voices were raised in Denmark requiring “reform.” Some took up the battle against the liturgy of the Church — because it was “antiquated” and “meaningless.” Up to this time the Danish service had retained all the essential features of the beautiful and devotional service of the Reformation period, but Rationalism had no use for it and succeeded only too well in getting the greater part of the Liturgy eliminated from the services of the church — creating a havoc which to the present day has but partly been overcome.
War was also started against the Communion vestments, but on this point no success was gained. The common people would not sanction the discontinuance of these ornaments of the service. Voices from all sorts and conditions of the people defended the continued use of these ancient heritages of the early days of Christianity. The attacks also seemed to neutralize themselves to a great extent by being directed at various objects. Some took up the battle against the candles on the Altar, arguing that it was more reasonable to place the money in the “school-fund” (how like the rationalistic mind! …). Others wanted to retain the candles, but suggested that the Communion vestments be sold to provide the means by which to buy candles. There is no doubt that great neglect prevailed in many parishes where a virtually indifferent clergy was in office, but it was all of a temporary nature. Others would come into their places and restore what had been torn down. The general consciousness was a deep desire to maintain the ancient appurtenances of the services of the church.
The leading Rationalist in Denmark, court preacher Christian Bastholm, was a decided enemy of the traditional services, as well as of the vestments, which he calls “ridiculous ornaments.” Many and various opinions could be quoted as examples of the lack of spiritual perception of things having to do with spiritual matters. Probst Jensen in the Karlabo parish does not know “why the white vestments should be retained — except that it does not confine one to the use of black, which color we are not accustomed to ascribe to the Angels of Light.”
In spite of all the confusion the old was not discontinued anywhere, and a consciousness settled more and more that the Communion vestments should be retained, and, wherever lacking, should be restored.
In 1803 a royal decision was issued declaring that the Communion vestments were necessary accessories of the altar and should be included in the regular inventory of all the churches. Another decision of September 1811 makes it obligatory on all patrons of churches “to provide new Communion vestments when the old ones are worn out.” This actually put an end to the devastating work of Rationalism [in Denmark].
…
What has been said of Denmark applies equally to Norway and in a slighter measure to Sweden, where conservatism was so much stronger. Through the changes and the chances of the period of Rationalism, the historic and oecumenical character of the Lutheran Church of Scandinavia had been preserved.
NOTES:
1. Smalcald Articles II, II:15, The Book of Concord, edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), p. 304.↩
2. Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:8, Kolb Wengert p. 545.↩
3. The Formula of Concord, for example, unselfconsciously jumps back and forth between references to “Scripture,” and a reference to what “has been written for us in God’s Word,” in such a way as to show without any doubt that one and the same thing is being described by both expressions: “Because ‘all Scripture is inspired by God,’ to serve not as a basis for security and impenitence but rather ‘for reproof, for correction, for improvement’ (2 Tim. 3[:16]), and because all that has been written for us in God’s Word was written not that it might drive us into despair but rather ‘that by patience and by the encouragement of Scripture we might have hope’ (Rom. 15[:4]), there can be no doubt whatsoever that the proper understanding or correct use of the teaching of the eternal foreknowledge of God produces or supports neither impenitence nor despair” (Solid Declaration XI:12, Kolb/Wengert p. 643).↩
4. The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles (a division of GoodNews Publishers).↩
5. The Holy Bible, New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.↩
6. C. F. W. Walther, Thesis V., “Theses on Open Questions” (1868).↩
7. John P. Meyer, “Unionism,” in Essays on Church Fellowship (edited by Curtis A. Jahn) (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1996), pp. 63-64.↩
8. The Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.↩
9. James F. Korthals, “Publication of the Book of Concord – 425th Anniversary,” Wisconsin LutheranQuarterly, Vol. 102, No. 3 (Summer 2005), pp. 227-28.↩
10. The divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is acknowledged in the Nicene Creed on the basis of the eternal derivation of these Persons from the Divine Father, who is the source or fountainhead of the Godhead. As the Nicene Creed lays it out, the Father is confessed at the beginning of the Creed as the First Person of the Holy Trinity, who does not derive his deity from any other person. The Creed goes on to affirm that the Son is divine because he is “begotten from the Father before all the ages.” And the Holy Spirit is confessed as divine because he eternally “proceeds” from the Father, and (as those in the Western tradition would add) from the Son of the Father (Nicene Creed, Kolb/Wengert pp. 22-23). Martin Luther employs this Greek mode of explaining the Trinity when he writes: “The distinction of the Father…is this, that He derived His deity from no one, but gave it from eternity, through the eternal birth, to the Son. Therefore the Son is God and Creator, just like the Father, but the Son derived all of this from the Father, and not, in turn, the Father from the Son. The Father does not owe the fact that He is God and Creator to the Son, but the Son owes the fact that He is God and Creator to the Father. And the fact that Father and Son are God and Creator they do not owe to the Holy Spirit; but the Holy Spirit owes the fact that He is God and Creator to the Father and the Son. Thus the words ‘God Almighty, Creator’ are found [in the Creed] as attributes of the Father and not of the Son and of the Holy Spirit to mark the distinction of the Father from the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Godhead, again, the distinction of the Son from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son; namely, that the Father is the source, or the fountainhead (if we may use that term as the fathers do) of the Godhead, that the Son derives it from Him and that the Holy Spirit derives it from Him and the Son, and not vice versa” (“Treatise on the Last Words of David,” Luther’s Works, Vol. 15 [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1972], pp. 309-10).↩
11. In the Athanasian Creed, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all recognized to be equally divine, because they all partake equally in the defining attributes of deity. All three Persons are uncreated, unlimited, eternal, and almighty. All three Persons are accordingly God and Lord. Yet there are not three separate beings who are uncreated, unlimited, eternal, and almighty, but there is only one God and Lord. This is why “we worship one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity” (Athanasian Creed, Kolb/Wengert pp. 23-25).↩
12. Hermann Sasse, This is my body (revised edition) (Adelaide, South Australia: Lutheran Publishing House, 1977), p. 253.↩
13. Jakob Aall Ottesen and Nils O. Brandt, “Indberetning fra Pastorerne Ottesen og Brandt om deres Reise til St. Louis, Missouri; Columbus, Ohio; og Buffalo, New York” (1857); in Carl S. Meyer, Pioneers FindFriends (Decorah, Iowa: Luther College Press, 1963), p. 63. Emphasis added.↩
14. Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXIV:79-81, Kolb/Wengert p. 272.↩
15. New American Bible (with Revised Psalms and Revised New Testament), copyright 1986, 1991, bythe Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.↩
16. Augsburg Confession VII:1-4 (Latin), Kolb/Wengert p. 43.↩
17. Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration X:31, Kolb/Wengert p. 640. Emphasis added. Martin Luther speaks in a similar way in his 1535 “Lectures on Galatians”: “With the utmost rigor we demand that all the articles of Christian doctrine, both large and small – although we do not regard any of them as small – be kept pure and certain. This is supremely necessary. For this doctrine is our only light, which illumines and directs us and shows the way to heaven; if it is overthrown in one point, it must be overthrown completely. …we shall be happy to observe love and concord toward those who faithfully agree with us on all the articles of Christian doctrine. … ‘One dot’ of doctrine is worth more than ‘heaven and earth’ (Matt. 5:18); therefore we do not permit the slightest offense against it. …by the grace of God our doctrine is pure; we have all the articles of faith solidly established in Sacred Scripture” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 27 [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1964], pp. 41-42).↩
18. Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:50, Kolb/Wengert p. 553.↩
19. Apology of the Augsburg Confession XV:42-44, Kolb/Wengert p. 229.↩
20. Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VII:75, 77-78, Kolb/Wengert pp. 606-07. Emphases added.↩
21. When a “lay reader,” in the absence of a pastor, is asked to conduct a service of the Word and deliver a sermon for a congregation, the sermon should be one that a pastor has either written or approved beforehand. The pastor thereby validates its soundness as an extension of his preaching office, and bears the responsibility for its content.↩
22. John F. Brug, The Ministry of the Word (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 2009), p. 221.↩
23. Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope 60-61, Kolb/Wengert p. 340. Emphases added.↩
24. Earlier in the Treatise, we read: “…let us show from the Gospel that the Roman bishop is not superior by divine right to other bishops and pastors” (Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope 7, Kolb/Wengert p. 331. Emphasis added.). This statement is then followed by an exegetical discussion of several passages from the Gospels and Epistles (8-11, pp. 331-32). The “Gospel” in its narrower meaning, as a reference to the message of God’s grace in Christ, bestows the forgiveness of sins, and does not bestow “legal authority.”↩
25. Apology of the Augsburg Confession XIII:9, 12, Kolb/Wengert p. 220.↩
26. Large Catechism I:158-63, Kolb/Wengert p. 408.↩
27. Small Catechism, Table of Duties: 2, Kolb/Wengert p. 365. Emphases added.↩
28. Another Pauline requirement for an ecclesiastical “presiding minister,” as cited in the Small Catechism, is that he be “the husband of one wife.” Martin Luther understood this to be speaking not only to the question of the marital status of a pastor, but also to the question of the gender of a pastor. A regularly-called bishop, pastor, or preacher in the church must be someone who either is, or is able to be, married to a woman. A regularly-called bishop, pastor, or preacher may not be someone who either is, or is able to be, married to a man. In his treatise “On the Councils and the Church,” Luther stated that the pastoral responsibility of administering the means of grace – both “publicly and privately” – “must be entrusted to one person, and he alone should be allowed to preach, to baptize, to absolve, and to administer the sacraments.” Luther then added this Scriptural restriction: “It is, however, true that the Holy Spirit has excepted women, children, and incompetent people from this function, but chooses (except in emergencies) only competent males to fill this office, as one reads here and there in the epistles of St. Paul [I Tim. 3:2, Tit. 1:6] that a bishop must be pious, able to teach, and the husband of one wife – and in I Corinthians 14[:34] he says, ‘The women should keep silence in the churches.’ In summary, it must be a competent and chosen man. Children, women, and other persons are not qualified for this office, even though they are able to hear God’s Word, to receive Baptism, the Sacrament, absolution, and are also true, holy Christians, as St. Peter says [I Pet. 3:7]. Even nature and God’s creation makes this distinction, implying that women (much less children or fools) cannot and shall not occupy positions of sovereignty, as experience also suggests and as Moses says in Genesis 3[:16], ‘You shall be subject to man.’ The Gospel, however, does not abrogate this natural law, but confirms it as the ordinance and creation of God” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 41 [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966], pp. 154-55.). “The Public Ministry of the Word,” a doctrinal statement adopted by the Evangelical Lutheran Synod in 2005, similarly states that “Scripture clearly teaches that women are not to be in the pastoral office, because this presiding office includes the exercise of authority over men (1 Corinthians 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-12). Also, when Scripture refers to one who officiates at the Word and sacrament liturgy it speaks in male terms (1 Timothy 3:2, 1 Timothy 4:13). Therefore women shall not read the Scripture lessons in the divine service, preach the sermon, administer Baptism or distribute the Lord’s Supper, for these things are intimately related to the pastoral office (1 Timothy 4:13-14, 1 Corinthians 4:1)” (emphasis added).↩
29. Lutherans have always recognized the legitimacy of a layman temporarily stepping into the office of pastor to perform a necessary pastoral act – such as the baptism of a person near death – when a regular pastor is not at hand. In the case of such a pastoral emergency, “the order yields to the need” (John Gerhard, Loci theologici; quoted in C. F. W. Walther, Church and Ministry [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House,1987], p. 285). But Lutherans should also make sure that it is a genuine need that prompts any departure from the normal, divine order. Cf. Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope 67, Kolb/Wengert p. 341.↩
30. Augsburg Confession XV:1-2 (Latin), Kolb/Wengert p. 49.↩
31. Augsburg Confession, Conclusion of Part One: 2-5 (Latin), Kolb/Wengert p. 59; Introduction of Part Two: 1, 6, (Latin) Kolb/Wengert p. 61.↩
32. Apology of the Augsburg Confession VII/VIII:33, Kolb/Wengert p. 180.↩
33. Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration X:5, 7, 9, Kolb/Wengert pp. 636-37. Let us take note, by the way, that this excerpt from the Formula represents the Lutheran doctrine of adiaphora. While the adiaphora themselves are not matters of doctrine per se, we do have a doctrine of when, and for what purposes, adiaphora are to be used; and a doctrine of how, and on what basis, adiaphora are to be evaluated. So, whena certain practice is identified as an adiaphoron, this does not bring the theological discussion of that practice to an end. In some ways that is when the conversation begins. Our Biblical and Confessional doctrine of adiaphora can then be brought to bear on our discussion of the practice in question.↩
34. Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, Part II (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1978), pp. 524-25.↩
36. Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXIV:1, 3, Kolb/Wengert p. 258. Joseph Herl reminds us that among the early Lutherans, “the Lord’s Supper was the center around which all other services revolved. Except for a few areas in the south that were influenced by the Swiss Reformation, the Supper was offered every Lord’s day and holy day throughout Lutheran Germany. Several practices highlighted the importance of the sacrament:
1. Private confession before each reception of the sacrament was required in nearly all Lutheran territories. … This practice not only assured the pastor that communicants were prepared for the sacrament, but also enabled him to count the communicants before consecrating the bread and wine. Thus the problem of what to do with the body and blood of Christ that remained after all had communed was avoided, as only enough for the announced communicants was consecrated.
2. The traditional vestment for Mass, the chasuble, was retained in many Lutheran churches.
3. With few exceptions, the Consecration, as it was called in the sixteenth century, was always sung. This practice was new with Luther; prior to his time in western Christianity, the priest said the Consecration softly so the people could not hear it.
4. Many Lutherans retained the Elevation, in which the priest raised the consecrated body of Christ aloft for the people to view.
5. In many Saxon churches, according to a contemporary report, the ringing of the Sanctus bell at the consecration of the bread and cup was retained into the eighteenth century.
6. Only ordained pastors distributed the sacrament.
7. Some churches used a houseling cloth to catch any crumbs that might fall from the host while it was being distributed. It was carried by an assistant and held underneath the chin of each communicant” (“Seven Habits of Highly Effective Liturgies: Insights from the Sixteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries,” in Thine the Amen: Essays on Lutheran Church Music in Honor of Carl Schalk [edited by Carlos R. Messerli] [Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2005], pp. 144-45).↩
37. Apology of the Augsburg Confession XV:38-40, Kolb/Wengert p. 229.↩
38. Wolfgang Musculus, Travel Diary; quoted in Joseph Herl, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 195-96.↩
39. Jacob Andreae, Martin Crucius, and Lucas Osiander, Correspondence with the Patriarch of Constantinople (1577); in George Mastrantonis, Augsburg and Constantinople (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1982), p. 144.↩
40. Since 1933, world Lutheranism has been able to claim for itself yet another type of historic liturgical service. The Ukrainian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, which then existed in the Galicia region of Poland (now Ukraine), published in that year an order of the Divine Liturgy that was based on the historic Byzantine Rite of Eastern Christendom. This rite is used now in the Ukrainian Lutheran Church, which preserves the legacy of the former Ukrainian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession.↩
41. Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1938), pp. 102-03. Emphases added.↩
42. In his treatise Von der Wiedertaufe, Martin Luther writes:
It is our confession that in the papacy there are the right Holy Scriptures, the right Baptism, the right Sacrament of the Altar, the right keys for forgiveness of sins, the right preaching office, the right catechism – such as the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Creed. … Now if Christianity exists under the pope, it must be Christ’s true body and members. If it is His body, then it has the right Spirit, Gospel, Creed, Baptism, Sacrament, keys, preaching office, prayer, Holy Scriptures, and everything that Christianity should have. Therefore we do not rave like the ‘enthusiasts’ that we reject everything in the papacy” (quoted in Holsten Fagerberg, A New Look at theLutheran Confessions [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1972], pp. 49-50).
In addressing those whoare still in the Roman Church, Luther also says:
It is true, I admit, that the church in which you sit derives from the ancient church as well as we, and that you have the same baptism, the sacraments, the keys, and the text of the Bible and Gospels. I will praise you even further and admit that we have received everything from the church before you (not from you). … We do not regard you as Turks and Jews (as was said above) who are outside the church. But we say you do not remain in it but become the erring, apostate, whorelike church (as the prophets used to call it), which does not remain in the church, where it was born and brought up. You run away from this church and from your true husband and bridegroom (as Hosea says of the people of Israel [Hos. 1:2]) to the devil Baal, to Molech and Astaroth. (“Against Hanswurst,” Luther’s Works, Vol. 41, p. 207. Emphases added.)
Specifically in response to the accusation that certain Lutheran liturgical customs are “Roman Catholic” and should not be used, C. F. W. Walther writes:
Whenever the divine service once again follows the old Evangelical-Lutheran agendas (or church books), it seems that many raise a great cry that it is ‘Roman Catholic’: ‘Roman Catholic’ when the pastor chants ‘The Lord be with you’ and the congregation responds by chanting ‘and with thy spirit’; ‘Roman Catholic’ when the pastor chants the collect and the blessing and the people respond with a chanted ‘Amen.’ Even the simplest Christian can respond to this outcry: ‘Prove to me that this chanting is contrary to the Word of God, then I too will call it “Roman Catholic” and have nothing more to do with it. However, you cannot prove this to me.’ If you insist upon calling every element in the divine service ‘Romish’ that has been used by the Roman Catholic Church, it must follow that the reading of the Epistle and Gospel is also ‘Romish.’ Indeed, it is mischief to sing or preach in church, for the Roman Church has done this also… Those who cry out should remember that the Roman Catholic Church possesses every beautiful song of the old orthodox church. The chants and antiphons and responses were brought into the church long before the false teachings of Rome crept in. This Christian Church since the beginning, even in the Old Testament, has derived great joy from chanting… For more than 1700 years orthodox Christians have participated joyfully in the divine service. Should we, today, carry on by saying that such joyful participation is ‘Roman Catholic’? God forbid! Therefore, as we continue to hold and to restore our wonderful divine services in places where they have been forgotten, let us boldly confess that our worship forms do not tie us with the modern sects or with the church of Rome; rather, they join us to the one, holy Christian Church that is as old as the world and is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets” (DerLutheraner, Vol. 9, No. 24 [July 19, 1853], p. 163).↩
43. William Julius Mann, “Blaetter aus dem Wanderbuche,” Der Deutsche Kirchenfreund, Vol. VIII (1855), pp. 386 ff.; quoted in Adolph Spaeth, Charles Porterfield Krauth, Vol. I (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1898), pp. 354-55.↩
44. August L. Graebner, book review of Church Liturgy for Evangelical Lutheran Congregations of theUnaltered Augsburg Confession, The St. Louis Theological Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (August 1881), pp. 77-78.Emphasis in original.↩
45. Introduction, Lutheran Hymnary, Junior (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1916), pp. xii-xiii. See also C. F. W. Walther, “Methodist Hymns in a Lutheran Sunday School” (1883), in Matthew C. Harrison, At Home in the House of My Fathers (Fort Wayne, Indiana: Lutheran Legacy, 2009), pp. 331-32.↩
46. Frederick H. Knubel, Introduction to A Manual on Worship (Revised Edition) by Paul Zeller Strodach (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1946), p. x.↩
47. George Henry Gerberding, The Lutheran Pastor (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1902), pp. 123-24.↩
48. Paul E. Kretzmann, Magazin für evangelisch-lutherische Homiletik und Pastoraltheologie, Vol. 53, No. 6 (June 1929), pp. 216-17.↩
49. Walter E. Buszin, “Music in the Church, School and Home” (convention essay), in Report of theFifteenth Regular Convention of the Norwegian Synod (1932), p. 40.↩
50. Paul E. Kretzmann, book review of Screen and Projector in Christian Education by Paul H. Janes, Concordia Theological Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 1933), p. 79. Emphasis added.↩
51. John Schaller, “Danger Ahead!”, Lutheran Witness, Vol. 10, No. 8 (Sept. 21, 1891), p. 58.↩
52. Critics of so-called “contemporary worship” in the Lutheran Church often see many historical parallels between this phenomenon and the approach and attitude of the Pietists. But there are actually more and greater historical parallels between the thinking of “contemporary worship” advocates and the agenda of the Rationalists. Joseph Herl recounts that “Calls for liturgical reform written from a Rationalist perspective began to appear in the 1780s. They called for drastic modifications to the traditional liturgy or even wholesale abandonment of it. … Johann Wilhelm Rau argued in 1786 that the old formulas were no longer usable because the expressions in them were in part no longer understandable and in part objectionable. Fixed forms in general were not good, and even the Lord’s Prayer was meant only as an example to follow and not as a prayer to be repeated. Some said that liturgical formulas served to ease the task of the pastor and preserve order in the service. But [according to Rau] the advantages were specious: very few pastors had so little time left over from other duties that they could not prepare a service, and in Dortmund (for example) no liturgical formulas were prescribed, without disruption to the service. Each pastor used his own self-written order or spoke extemporaneously. According to Rau, the most important abuses to curb were the too-frequent use of the Lord’s Prayer, the making of the sign of the cross, the Aaronic benediction, chanting by the pastor, the use of candles on the altar, private confession, the use of the appointed lectionary texts for sermons, and various superstitious practices surrounding communion, such as carrying the houseling cloth to catch crumbs that might fall and referring to the ‘true’ body and blood of Christ. … Peter Burdorf, writing in 1795, argued that repetition in the liturgy weakened the attention of the listener and the impact of the form. The current liturgy did not hold people’s attention, nor did the sermon. … Some liturgy was necessary for public services to be held, but it should be as simple as possible in order to meet the needs of contemporary Christians. Rationalist writers backed up their words with deeds and produced a number of new liturgies written with the above concerns in mind. Luther Reed…offered the opinion that these liturgies ‘ranged in character from empty sentimentality to moralizing soliloquy and verbosity.’ … Hymns were rewritten as well with a view to removing ‘superstition’ and outdated theology. … This, then, was the situation around the turn of the nineteenth century. In 1817, the three hundredth anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, Claus Harms published his anti-Rationalistic Ninety-Five Theses, which marked the beginning of a revival of Lutheran theology and liturgy that was to continue for more than a century” (Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism, pp. 127-29).↩
53. Jacob Aall Ottesen Stub, Vestments and Liturgies (n.d.), pp. 3-4. The catholic liturgical spirit of the (old) Norwegian Synod was a faithful reflection of the classic piety of orthodox Lutheranism, from its purest era, before that piety was largely eclipsed under the influence of Pietism, Rationalism, and Calvinism. Rudolf Rocholl gives us an intriguing glimpse into the world of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century orthodox Lutheran worship: “According to the Brunswick Agenda of Duke Augustus, 1657, the pastors went to the altar clad in alb, chasuble, and mass vestments. Sacristans and elders held a fair cloth before the altar during the administration, that no particle of the consecrated Elements should fall to the ground. The altar was adorned with costly stuffs, with lights and fresh flowers. ‘I would,’ cries [Christian] Scriver, ‘that one could make the whole church, and especially the altar, look like a little Heaven.’ Until the nineteenth century the ministers at St. Sebald in Nuremberg wore chasubles at the administration of the Holy Supper. The alb was generally worn over the Talar, even in the sermon. [Valerius] Herberger calls it his natural Säetuch [seed-cloth], from which he scatters the seed of the Divine Word. The alb was worn also in the Westphalian cities. At Closter-Lüne in 1608 the minister wore a garment of yellow gauze, and over it a chasuble on which was worked in needlework a ‘Passion.’ The inmates and abbesses, like Dorothea von Medine, were seen in the costume of the Benedictines. The ‘Lutheran monks’ of Laccuna until 1631 wore the white gown and black scapular of the Cistercian order. Still later they sang the Latin Hours. The beneficiaries of the Augustinian Stift at Tübingen wore the black cowl until 1750. The churches stood open all day. When the Nuremberg Council ordered that they should be closed except at the hours of service, it aroused such an uproar in the city that the council had to yield. In 1619 all the churches in the Archbishopric of Magdeburg were strictly charged to pray the Litany. In Magdeburg itself there were in 1692 four Readers, two for the Epistle, two for the Gospel. The Nicene Creed was intoned by a Deacon in Latin. Then the sermon and general prayer having been said, the Deacon with two Readers and two Vicars, clad in Mass garment and gowns, went in procession to the altar, bearing the Cup, the Bread, and what pertained to the preparation for the Holy Supper, and the Cüster [Verger] took a silver censer with glowing coals and incense, and incensed them, while another (the Citharmeister?) clothed and arranged the altar, lit two wax candles, and placed on it two books bound in red velvet and silver containing the Latin Epistles and Gospels set to notes, and on festivals set on the altar also a silver or golden crucifix, according to the order of George of Anhalt in 1542. The Preface and Sanctus were in Latin. After the Preface the communicants were summoned into the choir by a bell hanging there. The Nuremberg Officium Sacrum (1664) bids all the ministers be present in their stalls, in white Chorrocken, standing or sitting, to singafter the Frühmesse [Morning Mass], ‘Lord, Keep Us Steadfast.’ The minister said his prayer kneeling with his face to the altar, with a deacon kneeling on either side. He arranged the wafers on the paten in piles of ten, like the shewbread, while the Introit and Kyrie were sung. The responses by the choir were in Latin. Up to 1690 the Latin service was still said at St. Sebald’s and St. Lawrence’s [in Nuremberg]. Throughout this (eighteenth) century we find daily Matins and Vespers, with the singing of German psalms. There were sermons on weekdays. There were no churches in which they did not kneel in confession and at the Consecration of the Elements” (Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland [1897], pp. 300-02; quoted in Edward T. Horn, “Ceremonies in the Lutheran Church,” Lutheran Cyclopedia [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899], p. 83).
One of the things I remember about my seminary years (before I dropped out) was reading a paper by Kurt Marquart defending objective justification – the teaching that
[Justification] is the object of faith in that it is offered by God in the Gospel; it is the effect [of faith], to put it thus, in so far as grace having been apprehended by faith, the forgiveness of sins happens to us by that very act. (from Calov’s classic commentary on the Augsburg Confession, 1665)
When I heard persons talk about “objective justification” I automatically thought about Kurt Marquart and this article.
Therefore it is particularly interesting, in this piece recently posted by Trent Demarest, to read Marquart denouncing what we might call a notion of objective justification which has fallen off one side of the horse (we recall that Martin Luther talked about how humanity is like a drunk man who falls off one side of a horse, only to get on it again and to fall off of the other side).
Without further ado, this is Kurt Marquart, on the “Kokomo” theses, which he describes as “mischievous nonsense” and “an absurd and reprehensible travesty of Lutheran doctrine” (I do not bold so you will not be tempted to skip any of this!):
Here are the four “Kokomo” theses forced on some hapless Indiana Lutherans (Wisconsin Synod) in 1979, on pain of excommunication:
Objectively speaking, without any reference to an individual sinner’s attitude toward Christ’s sacrifice, purely on the basis of God’s verdict, every sinner, whether he knows it or not, whether he believes it or not, has received the status of a saint.
After Christ’s intervention and through Christ’s intervention, God regards all sinners as guilt-free saints.
When God reconciled the world to Himself through Christ, He individually pronounced forgiveness on each individual sinner whether that sinner ever comes to faith or not.
At the time of the resurrection of Christ, God looked down in hell and declared Judas, the people destroyed in the flood, and all the ungodly, innocent, not guilty, and forgiven of all sin and gave unto them the status of saints.
Thesis 3 is perhaps the least offensive, although in its context it is thoroughly misleading. Thesis 1 confuses “objective” and “subjective” justification by saying of the former what may only be said of the latter, namely that sinners have “received” forgiveness. Objective justification means that forgiveness has been obtained for and is being offered to all in the Gospel—not that anybody has “received” it. The receiving can happen only through faith, sola fide. Thesis 2, that after Christ’s sacrifice “God regards all sinners as guilt-free saints” is simply false, St. Jn. 3:36; 1 Jn. 5:12. And Thesis 4 about hell’s human denizens being pronounced innocent, given “the status of saints,” etc. is fantasy. An unbiblical logic has driven biblical language senseless: what can it possibly mean to have (or, worse, receive!) “the status of saints” in hell? The grace and forgiveness which Christ obtained for all, had been offered to the dead during their life-time, in the means of grace (St. Lk. 16:29; Heb. 9:27), but are in no way given to the godless in hell, where there is no Gospel, hence no forgiveness (Large Catechism, Creed, 56).”
(end quote from Marquart)
In Marquart’s piece he not only deals with the Kokomo theses but also takes on another person responding critically to those these, Mr. Larry Darby. It seems to me that what this writing of Marquart’s shows is that he was a master – a very careful scholar and amazingly insightful student of both the Scriptures and confessional Lutheran theologians. I have never heard anyone accuse Marquart of being careless in his scholarship (or his life for that matter).
Particularly interesting is that Marquart quotes all of these remarks from Mr. Darby… :
“… Whether one likes the change or not, most honest Lutherans will admit that the de facto leading message of modern Lutheranism is “you are already forgiven” (p. 15)”
and
“Do we Christians live a life of daily repentance (contrition brought on by the Law and faith renewed/strengthened by the Gospel) or do we anesthetize our consciences by repeating the mantra “God has already forgiven the whole world, and I am certainly included in that”?
and
“Anyone who has ever tried to speak the words of God to an impenitent sinner knows that “you’re already forgiven” goes over a lot better than “you’re a wretched sinner on the road to hell.”
and
“… I encourage you to test the widespread acceptance of this doctrine for yourself: ask fellow professing Lutherans what they “do” when spiritual doubts arise. See if they talk about the means of grace, word and Sacrament, or the “fact” that all sins are already forgiven. Ask them what they “do” when they find themselves stuck in a particular sin . . . see whether their answer includes contrition, confession and absolution (pp. 251-252).”
…and goes on to simply say:
“These are very astute and relevant observations. Given the self-indulgent outlook of the times, the “Kokomo” views are just the twisted sort of version of objective justification one would expect to arise. The undercutting of the means of grace is its chief theological flaw and spiritual peril.”
Near the end of the paper, Marquart writes:
“The logic is not, “I am forgiven because all are forgiven,” but: “I can rely on forgiveness in the Gospel and Sacraments, because it is there for all.” If forgiveness did not exist in Christ and His Gospel objectively for all mankind, how could I possibly presume to think that I receive it in the means of grace?”
Am I wrong in suggesting that there might be a particular temptation for many of us to do this today? Mea Culpa. Also, I like to read the blog of Alvin Kimel, the Eastern Orthodox priest who was formerly Roman Catholic and before that Anglican and who has an affinity for Gerhard Forde, Robert Jenson and other ELCA (formerly in Jenson’s case) Lutherans. There is no doubt that Father Kimel, a highly astute, intelligent, and humane man, has been giving voice to ideas very similar to this on his blog, where he has basically been arguing for a revamped universalism that makes hell into purgatory.
I think it is understandable that Lutherans proclaiming the Gospel might want to try to especially highlight the grace of God to those who have convinced themselves that even if God exists they would not want to know him anyways… “Who did Jesus die for?… How many sins did He pay for?… Which of your sins did Jesus forget to pay for?”, etc. And not only with words, but by going out of one’s way to treat all persons with gentleness, kindness, respect, and the compassion that Christ felt in His guts.
Nevertheless – in our efforts to “shake people up” and disrupt false understandings of God, I come away from this post more aware that how we do this is critical – perhaps not necessarily because we are concerned about giving false impressions to the particular persons that we attempt to reach in concrete situations, but rather because we are concerned with what the broader church hears. We do not want to – should not want to – create impressions like those Darby lists above, and we certainly do not want to – should not want to – give encouragement to persons who might aim to construct and/or support systematic understandings of theology that are built, in large part, on false or misleading understandings of objective justification.
“Gospel reductionism” was a term coined in the Missouri Synod during the 1960s. The term had its birth in the battle over the normative nature and extent of the Law and Gospel principle implicit in Lutheran theology. In the 1960s some theologians began to invoke Law-Gospel as the ruling or the only hermeneutical presupposition in Lutheran theology. They adopted this hermeneutic as a replacement for the old inspiration doctrine, which they had decisively abandoned in this period. The adoption of this method spurred a critical response by John W. Montgomery and others, such as Ralph A. Bohlmann and Robert D. Preus. Montgomery traveled around the Synod during the spring and fall of 1966 delivering papers opposing the doctrinal aberration, which he called “Law/Gospel reductionism,” among other things. Montgomery’s essays were printed in book and pamphlet form and were widely disseminated in the LCMS and beyond. In time “Law/Gospel reductionism” became known by the more compact moniker “Gospel reductionism.” Edward H. Schroeder responded to Montgomery’s charges against “Gospel reductionism” in his 1972 article, “Law-Gospel Reductionism in the History of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.” It was universally agreed that Gospel reductionism could make a major impact on the doctrinal basis for the existence of the LCMS.
Schroeder summarized the important contributions made to Lutheran theology by C. F. W. Walther and Werner Elert, which have been reviewed in previous chapters. Their work showed the importance of the Law-Gospel principle in Lutheran theology. However, Schroeder went beyond what Walther and Elert had taught about Law and Gospel. For Schroeder, Gospel reductionism became more than just a way of denominating the Lutheran habit of judging doctrine based on metatheological themes, such as justification, which is the obverse of the Law and Gospel coin. Law and Gospel was the biblical hermeneutic of the Lutheran church for Schroeder. This approach generated a firestorm of opposition.
How could such an apparently Lutheran approach to theology generate such significant opposition? The principle of Gospel reductionism itself was not the problem. The problem of Gospel reductionism revolved around its meaning, extent, and relationship to other significant Lutheran principles of theology. Schroeder, among others, was using Gospel reductionism as a principle of biblical interpretation, a hermeneutic, indeed, as the only Lutheran hermeneutic.
Schroeder’s form of Gospel reductionism was criticized because it functioned as a hermeneutical presupposition rather than strictly as a theological principle. For Schroeder Law and Gospel had become “the hermeneutical touchstone” of the Lutheran Confessions. Schroeder even defended his position as consistent with a quia subscription to the Lutheran Confessions. “Thus anyone concerned with his quia subscription to the Lutheran Symbols could hardly take umbrage at anyone using the centrality of the Gospel, even ‘reducing’ issues to Gospel or not-the-Gospel, as his Lutheran hermeneutical key for interpreting the Bible.” Schroeder believed that the theologians who wrote the classical confessional documents of the Lutheran Reformation had actually functioned with just such a hermeneutical key to Scripture.
The distinction between Law and Gospel is the operating yardstick whereby the confessors practiced their Gospel reductionism. That distinction gave them a theological Occam’s razor to keep from multiplying Gospels (or from expanding the Gospel to include more and more things that one must believe) and to perceive when something was Gospel and when something was not. Thus the distinction is not a doctrine itself. But it is a procedure practiced as an auxiliary theological tool in theology and proclamation to keep the Gospel “Gospel.”
The problem with this characterization of the function of Law and Gospel in Reformation Lutheran theology is that, though it was a basis, it certainly was not the only basis for the confessors’ principled rejection of the work righteousness of the Roman Catholics. For example, when Luther and Melanchthon were confronted with the need to support their views, they repaired to a grammatical-historical exegesis of the essential biblical texts. Ralph Bohlmann, who inductively drew the hermeneutical principles employed by the Lutheran confessors from the Lutheran confessional documents, has shown this. Thus, this argument by Schroeder fails to convince because there is no evidence that the Lutheran confessors used the Gospel alone as their biblical hermeneutic.
Moreover, a serious contention remained over whether Law and Gospel was a hermeneutical principle at all. The Law-Gospel principle functioned as a principle of theology in the writings of the Lutheran Reformation, but it was not a hermeneutical presupposition in the sense that Schroeder used. Law and Gospel was a principle that led the Lutheran Reformers to reject certain teachings and practices because the teachings and practices were opposed to the Gospel or in conflict with the Gospel. For example, in the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon used the Gospel to reject the imposition of human traditions upon the practice of the church:
They are admonished also that human traditions instituted to propitiate God, to merit grace, and to make satisfaction for sins, are opposed to the Gospel and the doctrine of faith. Wherefore vows and traditions concerning meats and days, etc., instituted to merit grace and to make satisfaction for sins, are useless and contrary to the Gospel.
The practice of the church was to be normed by the Gospel, so the practices that contradicted it could not be tolerated when they implied that forgiveness of sins was merited by their observance. This principle was drawn from Scripture; it was not a presupposition used in the interpretation of Scripture or imposed upon Scripture. Stricte dictu, it was not a biblical hermeneutic.
Holsten Fagerberg, whom Schroeder criticized, pointed this out for the doctrine of justification in the Lutheran Confessions. “But this doctrine is not a general key to the Scriptures. Instead of being the sole principle for the interpretation of the Scriptures, it provides the basic rule which clarifies the Scriptural view concerning the relation between faith and good works.” The same can be said of the Law and Gospel theme in the Lutheran Confessions. The Law and Gospel theme had extensive norming significance in Lutheran theology, but it was itself normed by the text of Scripture. Fagerberg stated precisely, “The confessional statements on Law and Gospel do not contain any general orientation for the interpretation of the Bible.” Kurt Marquart provided a more nuanced criticism of the Gospel reductionistic approach to use the Gospel as the sole norming authority.
Of course justification, or the Gospel in its strictest sense, is the heart and soul of, and therefore the key to, the entire Scripture. And just because the Gospel permeates the entire Scripture (always presupposing the Law), the Scripture-principle is Gospel-authority. Hence it is always and only actual Bible texts, that is the “certain and clear passages of Scripture,” and not some “Law and Gospel” floating above them, which constitute the “rule” for interpretation!
The Gospel or Scripture choice reflected a false either/or. Therefore, Schroeder’s claim that the Gospel reductionistic hermeneutic was the hermeneutic of the Lutheran Reformation was gravely flawed.
The use of Gospel reductionism as a hermeneutical tool had significant effects upon the approach to the third use of the Law. This result can be seen in the essays of Robert J. Hoyer in The Cresset, the magazine of Valparaiso University. Hoyer stated that Law and Gospel interpreted Scripture and were used to norm preaching and teaching in the church. For Hoyer, Law and Gospel are to be used to elicit meaning from the biblical text. The distinction was not just a theological filter, but a biblical hermeneutic.
As already shown Gospel reductionism reduced authentication of points of Lutheran doctrine to whether they were “Gospel or not-the-Gospel.” With such a sharp razor of discernment, the third use of the Law is ripe for excision. The Law immediately comes under scrutiny as “sub-Gospel.” Schroeder suggested that George Stöckhardt critiqued the third use of the Law using the razor of Gospel reductionism already in 1887. While the determination of the validity of this claim remains outside the parameters of this discussion, Schroeder definitely was leading to a decisive break from the Lutheran doctrine of the third use of the Law. This use of the Law-Gospel hermeneutic is set into sharp relief by the writings of Hoyer. The Law could only judge and condemn and no more. The Law “can not really tell man what to do leading to a proper relationship with God.” There could be no ethical use of the Law whatsoever. In fact, to use it as an ethical tool would be rebellion against the Law itself. “The ethical use of the Law is that rebellion.” Basing his argument on Romans 1, Hoyer asserted that the only ethical causation attributable to the Law is rebellion against God. The Law’s only purpose is condemnation. For Hoyer, not even civil or social righteousness remains for the Law. In a short 1968 article, Hoyer advocated anarchy. “Yes, anarchy is what I propose. The proposal may be folly because of human weakness. Grace is the solution to human weakness.” The third use of the Law has absolutely no place in this approach. Not even the first use of the Law survives these presuppositions.
The simplicity of the principle of Gospel reductionism leads to abuse. Because of its simplicity, theologians can easily use it to criticize central Christian teachings, such as the validity of the Law in the life of the Christian. There is a serious threat of a severe reduction of Christian doctrine to a bare Gospel, which is no Gospel at all. A further difficulty implied by the simplicity of the principle is that it can be radically interpreted so as to rule out significant and central Christian doctrines. One person’s Law might be another person’s Gospel. The lack of an anchoring certainty troubled the critics of these Gospel reductionistic techniques. For Schroeder, Gospel reductionism functions without being anchored in authoritative texts and even functions to judge the meaning and applicability of the text of Scripture. Ironically, Law-Gospel reductionism functioned to rule out the third use of the Law. Thus, in the end, Schroeder had reduced Law-Gospel reductionism to be truly only Gospel reductionism, and that based on an extremely narrow definition of Gospel.
(Rev. Dr. Scott R. Murray, Law, Life, and the Living God, Concordia Publishing House: St. Louis, 2001. 103-107)
Salvation, understood in its broad sense, also consists of the sanctification, or “Christification” of the Christian man. Lutherans insist on distinguishing, not separating, justification and sanctification. Picture is from a paper by my pastor and can be obtained here.
Isn’t that what the Eastern Orthodox believe in? Aren’t we Lutherans different?
I remember how joyful I felt years ago when I stumbled upon and read Kurt Marquat’s article Luther and Theosis. He said things in that article that made so much sense, and yet they were things that I did not recall having heard elsewhere in Lutheran circles (or at least, not so explicitly).
And now, Pastor Jordan Cooper has a new book out on theosis, called “Christification” (see sidebar). One of Pastor Cooper’s main points is that just because we Lutherans can and should say that we believe in theosis, that does not mean that we mean quite what the Eastern Orthodox mean. There are some very important distinctions that need to be made here.
More on the book:
The doctrine of theosis has enjoyed a recent resurgence among varied theological traditions across the realms of historical, dogmatic, and exegetical theology. In Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis, Jordan Cooper evaluates this teaching from a Lutheran perspective. He examines the teachings of the church fathers, the New Testament, and the Lutheran Confessional tradition in conversation with recent scholarship on theosis. Cooper proposes that the participationist soteriology of the early fathers expressed in terms of theosis is compatible with Luther’s doctrine of forensic justification. The historic Lutheran tradition, Scripture, and the patristic sources do not limit soteriological discussions to legal terminology, but instead offer a multifaceted doctrine of salvation that encapsulates both participatory and forensic motifs. This is compared and contrasted with the development of the doctrine of deification in the Eastern tradition arising from the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius. Cooper argues that the doctrine of the earliest fathers—such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Justin—is primarily a Christological and economic reality defined as “Christification.” This model of theosis is placed in contradistinction to later Neoplatonic forms of deification.
A couple of the endorsements on the book:
“Cooper’s work exhibits all the elements one would expect from a Lutheran scholar—a commitment to sola scriptura, a strong defense of a forensic notion of justification, and an emphasis on sacramentology—while at the same time incorporating a notion of theosis as Christification. Alongside other Protestant construals of theosis, Cooper’s work makes a fine addition.”
—Myk Habets, Carey Baptist College, Auckland, New Zealand
“On the basis of a clear exposition of the Eastern Orthodox teaching on deification, with particular emphasis on the aspect of Christification, Jordan Cooper argues eloquently for its compatibility with Lutheran theology. Without obscuring the differences between the Orthodox and Lutheran approaches, he makes a valuable contribution to ecumenical theological dialogue and potentially to the renewal of the mystical tradition in the Western churches.”
—Norman Russell, St. Stephen’s House, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
You can purchase the book here. You can also listen to Pastor Cooper talk about the issue of theosis on two of his podcasts, here (“Theosis and Mystical Union”) and here (“Mystical Union in the Lutheran Tradition”). Lend him your ear.
Just and Sinner
![“[Descartes] declared that all past beliefs, all ideas inherited from family or state, or indoctrinated from infancy onwards by ‘authorities’ (masters, priests) must be cast into doubt, and examined in complete freedom by the individual subject… – Luc Ferry, discussing the impact of Rene Descartes, pictured (italics mine).](https://infanttheology.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/frans_hals_-_portret_van_renc3a9_descartes.jpg?w=245)
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