Descriptive or Prescriptive? (Part one)

At a recent conference, which was addressing the topic of Lutheran worship, a speaker suggested that Augsburg Confession 24, which speaks of Lutherans retaining the traditional worship forms albeit with some elements in the vernacular, was descriptive rather than prescriptive. The speaker went on to add that both the Scriptures and the Lutheran confessions speak sometimes descriptively and other times prescriptively, and we must distinguish between them. The point is well taken insofar as it goes. To emulate everything in the Bible would force us into all sorts of absurdities. We would have to betray Jesus, as Judas did, or cut off people’s ears with swords, as Peter did. Even genuinely godly behavior is not always to be emulated, or else we would all have to imitate Abraham and leave our home countries.

But what do we do with the descriptive parts of the Scriptures and of the Lutheran confessions? Do we simply say, “How quaint!” and ignore them as utterly irrelevant? Even if we agree that we cannot do everything exactly as in those passages, can they teach us something? This was an issue that was left unaddressed by the speaker, but one that I would like to explore in this and a subsequent blog.

The example given by the speaker might actually help us begin the conversation. He quoted Acts 2:44-45: “And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” (ESV) The vast majority of Christians have not followed this particular practice. Indeed, it was abandoned already in apostolic times. But does it have anything to say to us today?

First of all, we really ought to look at the full context of that passage—and by that I mean the whole book of Acts. Acts 2 tells us that the early church held all things in common and distributed money and other items as the faithful had need. But Acts 5 and 6 tell us that such a setup has its shortcomings—both on the supply and demand side of things. Some people began to withhold their contributions to the supply side (Acts 5:1-2), while others didn’t speak Hebrew well enough to ask that they be included on the demand side (Acts 6:1). It all became a nightmare for the early church, not least for the apostles (Acts 6:2). Eventually, the practice seems to have died out, but it did not end the church’s concern for the poor, as Acts 11:27-30; 20:35; 24:17 indicate. Thus, if anyone wants to adopt an Acts 2:44 methodology, he should expect problems of an Acts 5 and 6 nature to follow. (Note that the Saxon immigrants who came to Missouri in 1839 and eventually founded the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod tried an Acts 2 approach, too. The disastrous consequences are well documented in Zion on the Mississippi.)

But there is a further point that can be made. I dare say that the current practices of my church resemble more the second chapter of Acts than they do a chapter out of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations or, for that matter, Karl Marx's Das Kapital. The early church was so enthusiastic about the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ that they treated their personal property as of secondary importance. Perhaps they were a bit naïve in the way they helped the poor in their midst—just as I was a bit naïve in some of the ways I helped the homeless in the early years of my ministry. The early church wised up but didn’t lose their generous spirit, and I and my parishioners have done the same.

I wish I could take credit for this, but if anything they were the ones who taught me how much the spirit (if not the letter) of Acts 2 was alive among them. One time my car gave out and it was going to be a couple of days before I could get it back. One of my parishioners called me up and said that her husband was on his way bringing their car over to me. Would I just drop him off at home and then use their car until I got mine back? Now you might think that they did this because of the funny collar I wear, but I’ve seen them at work and I know that they have done this for other people in the congregation. When I thanked them for loaning their car to me, they said, “But, Pastor, you’ve given us rides when we weren’t comfortable travelling that far.” Well, yes, I had, but wasn’t that just a normal function of being a Christian? And then it dawned on me that without giving up entirely the notion of private property we were functioning much more like Acts 2 than I had realized. Each of us had a title to a car, but we didn’t let that get in the way of providing transportation for others in need. And that is as it ought to be.

And so we return to the original question. If Augsburg Confession 24 is largely descriptive, does it lose all prescriptive force? Not necessarily. We will have to look at the passage in its broader context and we then see if the spirit behind those words may help direct and govern our behavior today. I will examine those points in greater detail in a separate blog.

© 2011 James A. Kellerman