Fully Justified?

A Review of Jonathan Grothe’s The Justification of the Ungodly: An Interpretation of Romans. Two volumes. Self-published: St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, 2005. US$ 56.99.

In the early 1990’s Concordia Publishing House undertook the massive task of publishing a scholarly commentary series on the entire Scriptures. By my count, twenty-two volumes covering twenty books of the Bible (or portions thereof) have been published, but the volume on Romans never appeared, even though it was to have been one of the flagship commentaries and its writer was the editor of the New Testament portion of the series. There never was any official explanation, but the scuttlebutt was that the editorial board (including the doctrinal review board) of Concordia Publishing House was deeply dissatisfied with portions of the commentary that had been submitted.

The commentary that could have been part of that series now appears as this two-volume self-published work. If this is the work that CPH declined, the reader can understand both why it raised a few eyebrows and why the author might rightly have taken umbrage at some of the criticism leveled against this work. It is fortunate that the author found a way to get this work into circulation, for it certainly deserves a wide reading and thoughtful consideration—and at the same time careful critique.

There are many good things one can say about Grothe’s grammatical analysis and insights into individual passages, but this review will focus on some of the broader points he makes. First, he understands that Paul wrote this letter not as an idle exercise in speculative theology, but as a missionary who needed the support of the Roman church in order for him to continue his Gentile mission work. To do this, he had to write to the Jewish Christians in Rome who had heard of him but may have been skeptical about what he was doing. He had to convince these readers that his gospel was in accordance with the Jewish canon and gave Torah its due respect. Moreover, he had to show that this gospel was indeed powerful to save people, as he was claiming it did. Paul also had to convince them to such a degree that these Jewish Christians would not only not hinder his mission work, but convince their counterparts in Jerusalem to cooperate with him fully. Thus, the Epistle to the Romans is not (pace Melanchthon) the result of some impulse on Paul’s part to write a complete systematic theology, but is an exercise in how to read Scripture and Israel’s history with an eye to the Messianic missions, particularly among the Gentiles.

Given his emphasis on this background to Romans, it is understandable that Grothe understands “law” to mean “Torah” fairly consistently throughout the epistle. While it has been customary for Christians—both before and after the Reformation—to distinguish between the moral, civil, and ceremonial aspects of the law, Grothe will have none of it. Torah is Torah. In Grothe’s estimation Paul does not accept one part of the Mosaic Law (e.g., the moral law), while rejecting other parts of it (e.g., the ceremonial law), but argues that all of Torah has been abolished by the death of Christ. This does not make Torah irrelevant. In fact, the Christian is able to look at Moses as having written a Torah of faith rather a Torah of works (Romans 3:27), as the argument about Abraham’s justification in Romans 4 proves. While many translations and commentators translate the word “law” in this passage as “principle,” Grothe demonstrates that one can understand it more naturally as Torah. One can then understand this passage as outlining a different hermeneutic than that of the traditional Judaism of Paul’s day, an emphasis that is further developed in Romans 4, 9, and 10, to name a few places. Convinced that Paul almost always means “Torah” rather than “moral law” or some other aspect of the law when he says “law,” Grothe develops this insight to be at once one of the greatest strengths of his commentary and one of its greatest weaknesses, as we will see later.

Grothe is concerned that Christians are too quick to salvage the law and put Christians back under it. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way that most commentators view Romans 6-8 as a discourse on sanctification. To the contrary, argues Grothe, these chapters unfold the gospel’s power for salvation, even amid the ongoing battle against sin, and thus these chapters continue to unfold the justification of the ungodly. Thus, they are not so much an appeal for the believer’s sanctification, as C.E.B. Cranfield (among other expositors) suggests, but rather a defense against the slander that Paul’s gospel isn’t strong enough to save a rotten humanity.

Moreover, when Paul does finally get around to sanctification (Romans 12-16), Grothe argue that Paul views it primarily as a liturgical action, that is, as worship expressed in ordinary life. His exposition of chapters 12 and 13 in this light is worth the price of the two volumes alone, for he shows that the sacrificial concept of sanctification most visible in Romans 12:1-2 actually undergirds all a Christian’s actions with others, both inside and outside the house of faith.

Equally illuminating is his exposition of Romans 9. Commentators and dogmaticians alike have tended to assume that Romans 9:10-18 addresses Esau’s and Pharaoh’s eternal fate. But Grothe challenges that assumption. It is likely that the Pharaoh who opposed Moses is not among the number of those who are saved, but why should we assume the same about Esau? Paul is not speaking of eternal, unalterable conditions, but of the way in which God uses or rejects people in this life for the accomplishing of His goals. This interpretation accords well with Paul’s argument, especially in Romans 11, where Paul sees the (partial) Jewish rejection of Christ as something temporary and reversible—as well as something advantageous for God’s mission to the Gentiles.

Grothe’s exposition on these and other passages makes this commentary well worth reading. At the same time, the work is not without its faults. For one thing, there is precious little direct engagement of the scholarship of the New Perspective on Paul, the movement starting in the 1970’s that has challenged the “Lutheran” approach to Paul as a misreading of Paul’s intent. (“Lutheran” here includes more than those who subscribe to the Augsburg Confession; it refers to all influenced by the Protestant Reformation who assume that Paul’s theology was quintessentially concerned with justification by grace through faith in distinction to justification by works.) Grothe acknowledges that this recent scholarship on Paul warrants a new examination of Romans, but Grothe does little to engage it directly. Instead, he seems to assume that setting up a good, coherent Lutheran exposition of this epistle will suffice as a refutation to the New Perspective on Paul. To the extent that Grothe challenges other commentators, it is mainly older commentators (such as Cranfield) that he has in mind. The more recent commentators that he addresses (such as Käsemann) definitely do not come out of the New Perspective on Paul.

More troubling is the way that he handles two doctrinal issues: the third use of the law and church fellowship. In neither case is it absolutely clear that he falls into outright heresy, but he seems to be inviting misunderstanding at the very least. Because Grothe believes that “law” in Paul refers to “Torah” and that Paul does not distinguish between the moral, civil, and ceremonial laws, Grothe is adamant that Christians are not allowed back under the law, not even the moral law. At this point he comes dangerously close to denying a proper application of the third use of the law and thus falling under the damnamus of Article VI of the Formula of Concord. But just when the reader is ready to draw that conclusion, Grothe pulls back a little and explains that he is merely opposed to a Calvinistic misinterpretation of the third use of the law. His footnote 73 on page 759 quotes approvingly Jonathan Lange’s criticism of how the “third use” is often misused, noting that in the Formula of Concord “the law reproves, kills, and condemns the Christian, while in [Calvin’s] Institutes, the law only shakes, urges, and pinches the Christian.”

Grothe is correct to argue that preachers should avoid sermon outlines of (1.) second use of the law, (2.) gospel, and (3.) third use of the law. As Jonathan Lange has correctly explained at length (in the article Grothe cites), a preacher does not choose which way he will use the law. Rather the law has these functions all the time, and one cannot really tell one’s hearers, “Don’t think about the accusing aspect of the law as I preach this final section on sanctification now.” One might as well tell an audience, “As you listen to this song, remember that music has rhythm, melody, and harmony. This time, however, don’t hear the melody at all, but only the rhythm.” One can’t hear music—or the law—that selectively. A sounder approach is to realize that whenever one preaches the law, he is simultaneously damning sinners and outlining true godliness (as well as telling people how to behave in civil society). Thus, there is no need for a separate section where true godliness is outlined for believers. And if this is all that Grothe means, well and good.

But there is a larger question that has not been adequately addressed by those (including Grothe) who have a deep aversion to talking of the third use of the law. If the law is in no sense a moral guide and if the paraenesis of Paul’s epistles consists merely of injunctions flowing from the gospel, how do we prevent the gospel from becoming a new law? There was a strong legalistic streak in precisely those areas of Lutheranism that rejected the third use of the law in the 1960’s onwards. Granted, it was a liberal form of legalism, which may have clouded the ability of advocates and critics alike to see the potency of that legalism, but it was a real legalism, nonetheless. The gospel became less and less about the sinner’s justification before God; instead, a “second use of the gospel” came to predominate—where the gospel is less about God’s action on behalf of a sinner and more and more about God’s action in the justified. Ironically, such theologians talk incessantly about a gospel (rarely in the concrete, however, and certainly not in terms of vicarious atonement and other traditional constructs) and thus think themselves very evangelically-minded, all the while using this rather abstract gospel as the basis for moralizing on political and other issues.

I am not arguing that Grothe has fallen into this particular error. But given that he is less than clear on these matters—or rather does not unambiguously distance himself from such a misunderstanding of law and gospel—I can understand why a doctrinal review board may have found some of his comments troubling, especially when that board came from a denomination that still wakes up having nightmares about having nearly been hijacked by “gospel reductionism.”

The other area where Grothe surely touched a sensitive doctrinal nerve was in his discussion of fellowship. Much of what he says needs to be taken to heart. In fact, I dare say that his entire argument must be heard carefully—albeit often painfully and not uncritically—especially by clergy, who (Grothe argues) are too prone to shore up their own denominational prerogatives rather than seek a broader Christian unity. Grothe does not doubt that there are appropriate divides; Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other non-Trinitarians are clearly outside the pale of the church. But there are no half-brothers in the church, Grothe argues, and we need to start acknowledging that. He spends much of his exposition of chapters 14-16 on this topic, much more than perhaps the text itself would seem to warrant.

The big question, though, is this: what does this mean in practice? Here Grothe is less clear, largely intentionally. Is he advocating that all Trinitarian Christians be allowed to commune in confessional Lutheran churches—perhaps with the proviso that they accept the sacramental presence of Christ? He never says. To the extent that he offers a concrete proposal for action, he suggests that now might be a good time for Lutherans to revisit the status of the heirs of the a-creedal Radical Reformers, who were considered beyond the pale by the Lutheran Reformers. But lest he be accused of doctrinal indifferentism, he also insists that doctrine matters and that it is doctrine that must divide between those who are in and those who are outside the fellowship. After reading dozens of pages on this topic, the reader is left feeling that perhaps he is merely arguing against complacency in inheriting one’s ancestors’ feuds without examining whether or not a closer fellowship is possible with other Christians. Or maybe he is picking up the plea of the Wauwatosa theologians of the early 20th century Wisconsin Synod, who asked that we be charitable in our assumptions about those currently not in fellowship with us, especially when we see the one and only Holy Spirit creating the same Christian faith through the one and only Word in the midst of churches that do not share our confessional history.

If this is what he is aiming at, he has something to say. Every pastor who enters the ministry and every Christian who participates in the worship life of a particular church must not simply take up their ancestors’ feuds without thorough examination. No pastor ought to bind himself to a confession if he believes that its damnamus casts too wide a net. And thus he ought to not only examine the positive teachings of his church, but also consider whether he agrees that the doctrinal distinctions of that confession are not merely true but also necessary for Christian unity. I have argued elsewhere that the Lutheran Confessions get this exactly right, being neither too strict nor too loose in what they demand for Christian unity, but this is something each pastor and each generation of laity must conclude for themselves.

Again, I can see why this attitude touched a delicate nerve in the committee that reviewed this book. Our denomination was veering towards an ecumenical promiscuity in the 1960’s; had the trajectory continued, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (and its sister church, the Lutheran Church—Canada) would have been as been as vacuous in theology and promiscuous in church relations as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada). For a denomination breathing a sigh of relief that it didn’t go off the cliff, this plea of Grothe’s to get nearer the edge sounds a bit dangerous. And yet it is important for us to hear his warning against a mindless triumphalism and to heed his plea for Christian humility and charity, even while we hold true to our confession.

All in all, Grothe’s commentary is worth reading, even where it challenges us most. I understand why Concordia Publish House could not in truth say nihil obstat. However, I am glad to give it an imprimatur, even with a caution or two.

The Myth of Consubstantiation

In 2009 I purchased a copy of Nathan Feldman’s Pocket Dictionary of Church History—overall, an impressive work that had an uncanny ability to cover a broad range of material to define terms concisely and accurately. More recently I purchased Jeffrey Burton Russell’s Exposing Myths about Christianity, which attempts to defend Christianity from its detractors without taking any one particular side in intramural discussions but offering arguments for all sides.

Both works, however, failed miserably in their discussion of the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Feldman writes under the entry entitled “consubstantiation”: “Martin Luther developed the Eucharistic doctrine known as consubstantiation, which in time became closely identified with Lutheranism….Thus, for Luther there is a ‘real physical presence’ of Christ in, under, and around the Communion elements, but the bread and wine do not change in substance as in the Roman Catholic view of transubstantiation.” Russell makes the same error (p. 297): “Luther condemned transubstantiation and substituted the idea of ‘consubstantiation,’ in which the consecrated bread and wine are both bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ. Both interpretations depend on Aristotelian philosophy, so neither is a necessary way of defining how Christ is present.”

There are three major errors involved. The first is that “consubstantiation” is the term used to define the Lutheran doctrine. I have been a Lutheran for nearly half a century and that of the more confessionally attuned variety. (I’m a Missouri Synod Lutheran.) The term was never used in my confirmation instruction nor was it to be found in the Synodical Catechism, either of 1943 or 1986. In all my seminary education I may have heard the term once or twice, and then it was the sainted Dr. Robert Preus uttering the term with contempt and saying, “How can non-Lutherans say that we believe in consubstantiation? Don’t they read anything?”

Perhaps this was just an oddity of my experience. But if you look at the great Lutheran treatises on the Lord’s Supper written in the twentieth century, you would again and again notice the absence of the term. John Stephenson’s book on the Lord’s Supper in the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics series fails to mention it. So too does Hermann Sasse’s work, This is My Body, a serious examination of Luther’s thoughts on the sacrament. You will not find the term in Werner Elert’s The Structure of Lutheranism or Edmund Schlink’s Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, and other such surveys of Lutheran doctrine. Nor will you find it mentioned in Lutheran dogmatics (such as Francis Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics) or, if it does merit mention in passing, it is stated with disapproval. If consubstantiation is Lutheran doctrine, Lutherans have been keeping it a good secret.

Is the problem that modern Lutherans don’t know their history? Could it be that the term was used by earlier Lutheran dogmaticians and has since died in obscurity? An examination of Philip Melanchthon’s Loci or Martin Chemnitz’s Loci—two early Lutheran dogmatics—will prove that idea wrong. Nor will you find John Gerhard, the greatest Lutheran dogmatician of the age of orthodoxy, giving his imprimatur to the term. In fact, he heartily disapproves of it in his Harmony of the Gospels (chapter 171, leaf 784):

Quando veram, realem et substantialem corporis (et sanguinis) Christi praesentiam nos credere profitemur, nequaquam vel impanationem, vel incorporationem, vel consubstantiationem, vel physicam inclusionem, vel localem praesentiam, vel delitescentiam corpusculi sub pane, vel essentialem panis in corpus conversionem, vel durabilem corporis ad panem extra usum coenae affixionem, vel personalem panis et corporis unionem statuimus. (Emphasis in original)

When we confess that we believe in the true, real, and substantial presence of the body (and blood) of Christ, in no way do we imagine either an impanation or consubstantiation or a physical confinement or a local presence or the hiding of a particle underneath the bread or the conversion of the essence of the bread into the body or the permanent joining of the body to the bread outside the use of the supper or a personal union of the bread and the body. (My translation)

If any of the Lutheran dogmaticians of the seventeenth century were to use such quasi-Aristotelian terminology as consubstantiation, it would have been John Gerhard. But he explicitly rejects that term.

Well, then, neither modern Lutheranism nor the golden age of Lutheran orthodoxy used that term for their position. But surely this must be the doctrine taught by the Lutheran confessions (the Book of Concord), right? Again, you will not even find the term mentioned, although the Formula of Concord does reject some of the same things Gerhard does (such as impanation and local presence) that are frequently equated with consubstantiation. If we can find no other source, must we conclude that Luther is the author of consubstantiation? Again you can look at all of Luther’s works—and his substantial sacramental writings have all been translated into English—and you will find that there are only two mentions of consubstantiation in the American Edition of Luther’s Works, once in a footnote (footnote 152 on volume 40, page 196) and once in an introduction (for volume 37), and in each instance merely to disabuse the reader of the notion that Luther believed in consubstantiation.

Serious non-Lutheran scholars also concur that Lutherans do not believe in consubstantiation. Richard A. Muller, himself a Reformed theologian and therefore without a Lutheran ax to grind, nevertheless writes these words about consubstantiation in his Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (pp. 80-81):

According to the theory of consubstantiation, the body and blood of Christ become substantially present together with the substance of the bread and wine, when the elements are consecrated. This theory is frequently confused with the Lutheran doctrine of real presence. Consubstantio indicates the presence of Christ’s body according to a unique sacramental mode of presence that is proper to Christ’s body as such, and is therefore a local presence (praesentia localis, q.v.); the Lutheran view, however, argues a real, but illocal presence of Christ’s body and blood that is grounded in the omnipresence of Christ’s person, and therefore a supernatural and sacramental, rather than a local, union with the invisible elements of the sacrament….Consubstantio implies only a presence and not a union of Christ and the sacramental elements; it was taught as a possibility by Duns Scotus, John of Jandun, and William of Occam.

Muller not only points out that the nomen (name) of consubstantiation does not apply to Lutherans (the real term for the Lutheran doctrine is “the real presence”), but neither does the res (substance). And here we come to the second misunderstanding. Feldman states that the Lutheran view is that “there is a ‘real physical presence’ of Christ in, under, and around the Communion elements.” Such a definition would fit the view held by Scotus and company, but it ill fits the view of Lutherans, who do not believe in a local or “physical” presence. Moreover, while a person may believe in either consubstantiation or transubstantiation without believing in the sacramental union, the sacramental union is at the heart of the Lutheran view of the matter.

The third error (one made by Russell) is that Luther was beholden to Aristotelian philosophy in this matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Already at the time of the Heidelberg Disputations (1518), Luther had rejected the use of philosophy in defining theology and stated that he was especially distrustful of Aristotelian metaphysics.

Well, if consubstantiation is not a Lutheran term and does not express the Lutheran doctrine, why do so many non-Lutheran books say that it is the Lutheran view? It began with John Calvin’s 1553 broadside against Lutheranism in which he accused the Lutherans of believing in consubstantiation. It was meant to be a polemical term, and in the years that followed it would often be accompanied by others such as “impanation,” “Capernaitic eating,” “artolatry,” and the like. But calling consubstantiation “the Lutheran view of the Lord’s supper” is as accurate as defining Pelagianism as “the Arminian view of salvation” or fatalism as “the Calvinist worldview.” While polemicists may speak in that manner, it is improper for those claiming to be impartial observers to describe a movement by using its enemy’s slurs and distortions.

The real doctrine that Lutherans teach about the Lord’s Supper can be described under three terms: sacramental union, oral eating, and eating of the ungodly. We speak of a sacramental union; the bread and wine are united with the body and blood of Christ, as Paul clearly teaches in 1 Cor. 10:16 and as our Lord’s words in instituting the sacrament state (“This is my body…This is the new testament in my blood”). The exact mode in which Christ can effect this sacramental union is never stated in Lutheran theology. We know that He is omnipotent and can be anywhere and everywhere He wants to be. He has more modes of presence than we can name or understand. (See Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration 102-103.) We also teach that one receives Christ’s body and blood through the eating of the bread and wine, not through ascending to heaven in a mystical experience. Because the body and blood of Christ come through the bread and wine, all who commune receive the body and blood of Christ, not just those who do so in faith. Thus, it is quite possible for the ungodly to eat and drink damnation upon themselves by receiving Christ’s body and blood without discernment, as Paul clearly warns in 1 Corinthians 11:27-30.

This is the Lutheran view in a nutshell. Don’t expect American evangelicals to grasp it—let alone explain it accurately—anytime soon.

Mind the Gap

We have all heard people complain about the biggest gap in Christianity, the gap that is allegedly responsible for all the evils among Christians, viz., the twelve inch gap between the head and the heart. In this analysis, the problem is that too many people have a “head knowledge” of the truths of Christianity, but they don’t have the “heart knowledge” that is necessary for a Christian to thrive. What is the implied solution? The church ought to focus more on the heart and less on the head—in other words, more on the emotions and less on the intellect.

Behind this explanation is the current western way of looking at people. A human being has an intellectual center (commonly called the “head”) and an emotional center (commonly called the “heart”). Granted, nobody actually thinks that the cardiac organ is the seat or origin of emotions, but it is a convenient metonymy to differentiate between two aspects of the human mind that in our estimation have little or nothing to do with each other. We speak similarly of courage as “guts,” even though nobody thinks that our courage resides in our intestines.

The real problem comes about when we think that this modern way of dividing the components of a human being is actually the biblical way of viewing humanity. Compounding the problem is the fact that the Scriptures urge people to have a change of heart, and we tend to read “heart” with our culture’s eyes rather than with biblical eyes. And thus we see the Bible’s call to a new heart as an invitation to rework our emotions and to stop our intellectual growth as unnecessary at best and counterproductive at worst.

But the Bible doesn’t distinguish between head knowledge and heart knowledge. In fact, it doesn’t use the word “head” to refer to the intellectual aspect of mankind. Instead, it uses the word “heart” to do so. It is the heart that thinks and verbalizes ideas (Genesis 6:5; Deuteronomy 9:4). It is the heart that remembers (Deuteronomy 4:9). It is the heart that meditates and contemplates (Psalm 16:7; 19:14). Most importantly, it is the heart that possesses the will (Exodus 4:21) and makes ethical decisions (Deuteronomy 9:5; Psalm 7:10). To be sure, the emotions are also found in the heart (Exodus 4:14; Deuteronomy 28:65). But the Scriptures do not separate what we in the West do. It knows that the will, the intellect, and the emotions cannot be isolated from one another, but work together to form a common mind. Thus, when we read such phrases as Deuteronomy 4:29, that command us to seek after God with our whole heart, we cannot see this as an exercise purely of the emotions, but also of the intellect, the memory, and especially the will. When Deuteronomy 10:16 tells us to circumcise our hearts, it clarifies exactly what it means: we are not to be stubborn. In other words, it is a command to exercise the will (not just the emotions) more appropriately.

But are we denying that hypocrisy can be a problem with Christians? No, we are just reframing the question. The current received wisdom is that Christians become hypocrites when they aren’t emotionally in tune enough or when they try to acquire intellectual knowledge instead of practical knowledge. And yet the Scriptures have a different analysis of the problem. As the prophet Isaiah says (29:13): “This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.” Our Lord confirms the same sentiment in Matthew 15:8. The problem isn’t that they have a high spiritual IQ and a low spiritual EQ. The problem is that they have neither, even though they mouth the words. In other words, they say the right words, but don’t understand what they are saying, let alone assent to them.

It is for that reason that the psalmist prays (19:14), “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” The process of spiritual growth begins with the mouth and the lips, but it cannot end there. He wants his words to be orthodox and the meditation—there’s that thinking again!—of the heart that follows to be proper and in full accord with what his lips are uttering. The psalmist knows that God placed His Word very near us so that it could be on our mouth and in our hearts (Deuteronomy 30:14). We learn God’s Word by speaking it often, but it cannot be something that stays only on our lips but must be apprehended by our entire mind—will, intellect, and emotions.

As the passages mentioned above indicate, the Scriptures know that learning starts with the mouth, but must settle into the heart if it is to succeed. Thus, the Scriptures have a more nuanced attitude toward rote learning than we in the contemporary West do, which universally rejects it. As we have already noted, the Bible recognizes that people can recite certain truths without understanding, let alone believing them. It knows that mouthing the words is not the same as knowing or believing them. But at the same time the Scriptures do not eschew rote learning and memorization. They know full well that the first step in learning something is to say what one does not fully understand. Consequently, the Scriptures are full of admonitions to repeat God’s words as a way to get that Word into the heart of each generation. Deuteronomy 6:6-9 outlines such a procedure: God’s Word is meant to be stored in the heart; consequently, children are to be taught these words at fixed times during the day and these words are to be as visible as one’s head and hands and doorposts. Of course, this is only the first step, with the next step being for children to understand what they have been saying. The problem arises because children (and, for that matter, learners of all ages) can resist these words and only embrace them with their lips. But the problem isn’t with the repetition of the words of the Scriptures, but with the stubborn heart that refuses to learn.

Thus, there is still a gap that faithful Christians have to address. It’s just not the emotional-intellectual gap most Christians in America assume it is.

All Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).

Damnatio Memoriae

Quick, tell me the name of one of the shooters at the Columbine massacre. Now tell me the name of one of their victims. Is it more difficult to do the latter than the former? If so, you are a typical American who did not grow up in or live near Littleton, Colorado a decade ago. In part, it is because it is easier to remember two people (the murderers) rather than their twelve victims. Furthermore, one does not want to intrude into the grief of the mourning families more than it is necessary, and thus the media have tended to shy away from naming the victims endlessly. But the media have also shown an intense interest in understanding the psychology of the killers, and not altogether for a bad reason: if only we knew what made these murderers tick—what made these disgruntled teens go off the deep end—we might be able to prevent further tragedies. Had these killers not taken their own lives, the media would have also had to cover the ensuing trial, at which time it would have been difficult not to name them repeatedly. One can expect that this will be the case with the most recent mass shooting in Colorado.

It is at times like these that I wish we had the Roman custom of damnatio memoriae, the practice of obliterating from record a bad emperor or an offending person of high standing. In the accompanying picture you see the emperor Septimus Severus and his wife Julia Domna, as well as their two sons, Geta on the left and Caracalla on the right. If the image of Geta looks a little blurry, that is on purpose. After Severus died, Geta and Caracalla shared the imperial power for a couple of years until Caracalla ordered his assassination and took the full imperial power for himself. As a consequence, Caracalla ordered Geta’s image removed and he obliterated any reference to Geta in inscriptions. Of course, if anyone knows their history of late Roman antiquity, Caracalla himself was not all that great and probably deserved damnatio memoriae more than his brother did.

It would be nice if we could treat publicity-seeking heinous criminals in the same way. We already have the nearly universal custom of shielding rape victims and underage victims of crime by not naming them, and that is as it should be. Perhaps, though, the media could do society a favor and ensure that heinous criminals will not get the notoriety they seek. A little damnatio memoriae now and then is a good thing.

Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening, Part Three

Before reading this blog, the reader should look at the previous two blogs, especially the last one, which is a synopsis of Bishop Bo Giertz’s argument on the relationship between liturgy and spiritual awakening. Once we are familiar with Bishop Giertz’s argument, we can ask whether these words from mid-20th century Sweden have any relevance for us today.

We have to note the differences. Nearly every Swede of Giertz’s generation had been baptized and was a member of the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden, although many Swedes had but tenuous ties with the church. Giertz himself had been baptized as a child, even though both of his parents were atheists and he was raised in a largely secular environment. Thus, one of the major purposes of awakening movements in Sweden was to reconnect youth and adults with the church of their baptism that they knew little about. Now it still happens in the United States that children are baptized and then their spiritual growth is entirely neglected. But that is not as often the case here as in Sweden, since there is not the same social pressure to have children brought to baptism and made to belong to the one church that is integrated with the entire social fabric of the country. As the Church of Sweden has lost its standing in its society, there is a growing percentage of unbaptized Swedes. One can expect that future awakenings in Sweden (May God grant them!) will not be exclusively a re-conversion of the baptized, but also in large measure a conversion of the heathen.

In addition, awakening movements in Sweden had often been connected, sometimes rather tenuously and not altogether harmoniously, with the Church of Sweden. But in the United States, each awakening movement has turned its back on established churches and founded new ones. Revivalism itself has become an institution—and one spiritually impoverished by its substitution of new forms and a “new liturgy,” as well as its open hostility to creeds and liturgy. Consequently, each awakening movement is unable to pass on the faith to the next generation and the movement burns itself out—just as Giertz had so insightfully seen and warned.

Thus, we in the United States live in a situation where awakening and liturgy are not just rivals living in tension with each other, but where they have become bitter foes. We have evidence of where this leads, and it is just as Bishop Giertz had predicted. “Liturgy without awakening” has indeed become “the most dangerous of all church programs” (p. 28), as is evident in the Episcopal Church and in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), as well as many other mainline denominations. Churches that had never had lectionaries have adopted them. Liturgical worship has become more common in mainline churches, and there is a fascination with ritual. But at the same time orthodoxy and traditional Christian morality have never been so marginalized in those church bodies. The fascination with ritual has led not only to a recovery of ancient Christian rites, but also to the adoption of bizarre, half-pagan rites (such as labyrinth walks).

Meanwhile, American Evangelicalism has demonstrated the truth of Giertz’s contention that wherever the traditional liturgy has been discarded, “the new forms that grow up…are usually less attractive and more profane than the ancient liturgy” (pp. 17-18). Moreover, “they contain less of God’s Word, they pray and speak without Scriptural direction, they are not so much concerned about expressing the whole content of Scripture, but are satisfied with one thing or another that seems to be especially attractive or popular” (p. 18). Anyone who knows the history of American Evangelicalism knows how it has latched onto a particular idea in any given generation to the exclusion of the full counsel of God and how it has tended to be driven from one fad to another until finally the substantial theology of a Gresham Machen or a Carl F.H. Henry is replaced by that of a Robert Bell.

Where does that leave confessional Lutheranism, especially in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod? There have been several forces at work in the last decades. There was a liberal liturgical movement (much akin to what predominates in the ELCA now), but it failed to take over the synod and is largely a spent force now. But those who opposed the liberal liturgical movement were not all united as to how to move the synod forward, especially as it became apparent that the synod had stagnated in the late 1960’s and entered a stage of mild decline in the decades that followed. Some argued that the church needed an awakening to stem both liberalism and a decline in membership. These people saw American Evangelicalism as the antidote and embraced its trends—the charismatic craze, spiritual gifts inventories, the church growth movement, the seeker church paradigm, the megachurch phenomenon, contemporary Christian music, the house church trend, and the emergent church, to name a few. Granted, the Missouri Synod participants have tried to “Lutheranize” these movements, but (as their critics have rightly noted) they have tended to follow Evangelicalism as slavishly as the liberals followed mainline theology.

Others returned to the Lutheran confessions, which they saw as the antidote to the serious theological flaws of both liberalism and Evangelicalism. They tended to be mildly liturgical in the sense that they followed the Divine Service as printed in the hymnal but without any real interest in liturgical matters. But as the 1980’s and 1990’s unfolded, robust interest in theology was coupled with a robust interest in the riches of the liturgy. Unlike the liberal liturgical movement, where the rich liturgical language masked the unbelief of the celebrant, this conservative liturgical movement used the liturgy to express the fullness of its faith. And thus the most avowedly confessional people in the synod (those who can say what Solid Declaration Article III is about without having to look it up) are also the most likely to be very liturgically conscious. For them, those who have followed contemporary Evangelical trends are minimalists not only in worship, but in confessional commitment. But those who have followed more of Evangelicalism’s trends look at the confessional liturgical movement as aloof and unable to reach out to the lost who so desperately need the message of the gospel.

Bishop Giertz’s herdabrev may offer a fruitful proposal for dialogue between these two groups in our synod. He suggested that the liturgy of the common Divine Service held on Sundays and other festivals should be kept intact, but he allowed greater freedom for other, more informal gatherings of the church. The Divine Service is the common heritage for all Christians and is rich in biblical quotations and symbolism that give real sustenance to the mature. It should not be abandoned or drastically changed. But the church also needs to “speak to the children of the age in the language of the age about those things which have been forgotten but need to be heard again” (p. 14). This will take place outside of the Divine Service, in informal Bible studies and prayer groups and other activities that bring the unchurched, the de-churched, and the unbeliever into contact with God’s Word.

Bishop Giertz’s herdabrev will not end the worship wars, but it may serve as the basis for discussion that could lead to a just and lasting peace.

Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening, Part Two

In the comments below, I am quoting from Clifford Ansgar Nelson’s translation of Bishop Bo Giertz’s herdabrev, “Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening,” published by Augustana Book Concern in 1950.

Bishop Giertz begins his discussion of these matters by positing that “The Word of God creates the church” (p. 10). That Word appeared in two different forms—those “which seem to be more or less improvised and spontaneous and those which appear fixed and unchangeable”—or “awakening” and “liturgy,” as they are commonly called (p. 10).

Liturgy has deep roots in the apostolic age: “The altar is today the only place in our modern life where, with unbroken tradition, the vestments are still used which were worn by people in that olden day. Within the walls of the church one can still hear musical settings that preserve something of the very tones of that hymn of praise which our Lord and His disciples sang when they ate the paschal meal” (p. 12). And yet it is not the antiquity of the service that most commends itself, but “the fact that it is a form which the Spirit Himself has created to preserve and deepen the life which He has awakened in the church” (p. 13).

Awakening also has apostolic roots. But its language is different. “The instrument of awakening is the spoken Word, a word with prophetic authority, powerful to crush the hard rock of a soul and also appealing with all the inward warmth of the gospel. The language of awakening is often akin to everyday speech….Therefore, the words of awakening do not employ such phrases as, for the example, the Root of Jesse, or the Key of David. Rather do they speak to the children of the age in the language of the age about those things which have been forgotten but need to be heard again,” while liturgy “uses all the richness of the Scriptures, all the meaningful symbols and prefigurements of Christ in the Old Testament” (p. 14).

Both are necessary. “Awakening is always needed…because there is always the need for awakening even among the most faithful members of the church….The old Adam in each one of us is prone to fall asleep, to make the Christian life a dead routine, to use liturgical form to cloak his self-complacency and impenitence” (p. 16). “Liturgy is just as needful. There can be no normal church life without liturgy. Sacraments need form; the order of worship must have some definite pattern. It is possible to live for a short time on improvisations” but “in circles where people seek to live without any forms, new forms are nevertheless constantly taking shape….But it would not be wrong to say that the new forms that grow up in this way are usually less attractive and more profane than the ancient liturgy….The new liturgy that grows in this manner is poorer, less Biblical, and less nourishing to the soul than the discarded ancient order” (pp. 17-18).

Giertz notes that liturgy has many enemies, including “sluggish, dead passivity” (p. 19). But liturgy’s most formidable enemy is awakening, because few worldly sluggards count themselves as more spiritual than liturgy, but the awakened are tempted to count liturgy as an improper form of worship (p. 19). But as Giertz perceptively notes, “there is often a goodly portion of self-righteousness and egocentricity in [awakening’s] judgment. The old Adam is an unequalled opportunist” (p. 21). Awakening dismisses the liturgy because a person was not awakened in the liturgy but in some other manner and therefore, this manner “must be the proper way” or even “the only right way” (p. 21).

Giertz adds that there is another reason many oppose the liturgy, “humanly understandable but no more valid: There are people who find it difficult to feel at home in the liturgical forms” (p. 22). In other words, some people find liturgical forms “very natural, so that they immediately feel at home in them, while other people find it hard to become accustomed to them” (p. 23). A solution might be to abandon the liturgy in part or in total, but Giertz will have none of that: “All liturgy demands the submerging of self” (p. 22). A Christian “who will not subordinate himself in such fellowship is no Christian, because one cannot be a Christian by one’s self” (p. 23). “When revival piety in the church is unwilling to live in the framework of the liturgy in the common service of worship, it has placed itself outside the fellowship of the church and can no longer be counted as a living movement of the church of Christ” (p. 25).

Lest this seem too big of a burden for the non-liturgically oriented to bear, Giertz adds, “Outside the common worship service there must be freedom….There must be full freedom also for all those forms of worship which truly serve for edification; they may be services of prayer, inner circles of fellowship, liturgical orders of devotion, and many another type of worship” (p. 25). The only stipulation is that these worship forms “shall never displace or be a substitute for the great fellowship of the Sunday common service.”

Having spoken against awakening’s interference with the liturgy, Giertz warns about a false liturgy, which can “become an almost impregnable armor for the old Adam” (p. 26). He asks (p. 26), “What can the Holy Spirit do with a person who goes to Communion more faithfully than anyone else in the congregation, who for an hour a day prays beautiful prayers from the Psalter or from the classic prayer books of Christendom…but who through all these exercises only becomes more and more convinced that he is a better kind of person, a person…who loves no one except himself and his holy ceremonies?” Thus, “liturgy without awakening is probably the most dangerous of all church programs. It is possible to enrich and beautify the worship service, to add vestments and choirs, to plan lovely vespers, and even to arrange for more frequent communions, without a single person in earnestness asking himself, ‘How shall I, a sinner, be saved?’” (p. 28).

Giertz adds that “awakening needs liturgy” (p. 30), if it is going to be sound enough to pass on its heritage from one generation to the next. But “awakening, or revival, can also serve liturgy. When men are wakened, there is new life in the old forms of devotion….Ancient, beautiful custom becomes more than custom. It becomes an expression for the life which is born again” (p. 31).

Giertz concludes by positing that “the need for awakening will one day cease. It belongs to this world, where men still sleep the sleep of death….But liturgy will remain….a never ending thanksgiving to the Creator and Father of all things” (pp. 31-32).

Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening, Part One

I recently came across a booklet written a full two decades before the outbreak of the current “worship wars,” but a booklet which is full of wisdom for today. It is the herdabrev, the bishop’s inaugural letter, of the late Rev. Bishop Bo Giertz, Bishop of Gothenburg, Sweden. The title of the herdabrev is “Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening” and is an appeal for the church to take both liturgy and spiritual awakening seriously.

The context is different, but there is still much we can learn. Bishop Giertz became bishop of Gothenburg in 1949 in a country where “high church Pietist” or “sacramental Pietist” was not a contradiction in terms, where those fervent to save people’s souls did not disdain the church, the sacraments, and the liturgy. This was the legacy of such theologians as Henric Schartau and even to some extent Carl Rosenius, who did not separate from the Church of Sweden even as they called for a renewal of it. In the United States, however, we have followed a different path, where spiritual awakening has always seen itself as the mortal enemy of previously established churches and their liturgies and sacraments. Indeed, spiritual awakening is seen as a quasi-sacramental experience and liturgy as a hindrance to it. Add to it the American love of consumerism and individualism as well as the American disdain for history, and you can see why the awakening movements in the United States have tended to create schismatic and wildly heterodox churches that foster a Platonic (if not crypto-Gnostic) disdain for the fully sacramental and liturgical life of the church. Given this environment, it is difficult for anyone who cares about creeds, liturgy, and rich theology to give a fair hearing to anything that comes out of the American revivalist scene.

And yet now might be a moment for those in America to reconcile awakening and liturgy. The past three decades have seen a growing number of Evangelicals dissatisfied with Evangelicalism’s shallow Christology, fluffy theology, disembodied ecclesiology, and contempt for the visible created world. Evangelicalism has not responded to the current crisis by all going in one direction, but one avenue for Evangelicals to express their dissent has been to join the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or Anglican Church. They have recovered creedal orthodoxy and liturgical sensibilities, but usually at the cost of a Reformation understanding of justification. Lutherans—especially confessional Lutherans—are such a tiny percentage of American Christianity that few Evangelicals recognize it as an option, especially since Evangelicals think that Lutherans are Zwinglian in their theology and liturgical style.

But what if a person could be both an heir to the broad catholic tradition (including the liturgy) and to the Reformation recovery of the gospel (with its emphasis on justification by grace through faith)? What if one could see that the liturgy is not the enemy of genuine spiritual awakening and vice versa, but that the one leads to the other? In other words, what if we could be good Lutherans and recognize that both liturgy and awakening are part of our apostolic inheritance and shall be ours until our Lord returns? That is the question Bishop Giertz in effect addressed in his brief monograph, “Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening.”

In the next post I’ll look at some specific things that Bishop Giertz had to say about awakening and liturgy.

Why Chiasms and Inversions?

Biblical scholars are increasingly aware of rhetorical patterns to be found in the Scriptures. Although the patterns were often discussed by grammarians and rhetoricians in antiquity, biblical commentators often ignored them until the past several decades. If one were to consult most commentaries written after the time of the Reformation, one would see that they tend to outline the argument of a book of the Bible using headings with Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc.), interspersed with letters (A, B, C, etc.), which in turn are interspersed with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.). In short, the books of the Bible are made to look like college freshman essays in their organization. However, in the past half century or so, there has been a quiet revolution that recognizes various structures that would make literary works easier for the listener to understand. While books for the past few centuries have been written primarily with the eyes of the reader in mind, older books were written primarily with the ears of the listener in mind, since it was common for books to be read aloud by a literate person to several illiterate ones. Books written in such a milieu would be unlikely to employ a complicated outline that required eyes to see the pattern. Instead, they used such patterns as parallelisms and inversions.

The latter is often erroneously called a chiasm, which properly refers to words that are organized in an ABBA pattern, where the first and last words are similar and those in the middle are similar to each other. Inversion is a chiastic pattern spread over several phrases or sentences rather than merely words, and inversion can become quite complicated, having any number of component parts, such as ABCDCBA. Ken Bailey, among others, has outlined the inversion structure found in many of the parables and indeed in the arrangement of larger passages such as Luke’s Journey Narrative (Luke 9:51-19:48).

But why should ancient authors have used inversions? Isn’t one structure as good as another? Consider the following example Ken Bailey gives of a modern conversation between two teenagers or young adults (Poet and Peasant, page 50):

            A: Are you coming to the party?

            B: Can I bring a friend?

            A: Boy or girl?

            B: What difference does it make?

            A: It is a matter of balance.

            B: Girl.

            A: OK.

            B: I’ll be there.

At first glance it appears as an ordinary, free flowing conversation between two people. But Bailey argues that there is a chiastic structure to this dialogue, as he demonstrates (loc. cit.):

            A   Are you coming to the party?

                        B   Can I bring a friend?

                                    C   Boy or girl?

                                                D   What difference does it make?

                                                D’   It is a matter of balance.

                                    C’   Girl.

                        B’   OK.

            A’   I’ll be there.

Bailey comments: “A fascinating number of such illustrations have come to my attention and demonstrate that the use of the inversion principle is relatively universal and subconscious….Usually there is a ‘point of turning’ past the center of the structure. The second half is not redundant. Rather it introduces some crucial new element that resolves or completes the first half.” Thus, if an author uses this kind of a structure (and builds rather elaborate inversion structures—more so than would be ordinarily used in common speech), it is because this is the way that people often talk and think. As the medieval thinkers said, ars est artem celare, very loosely translated as “great art always looks as if no art were involved.”

Bailey, however, gives no explanation as to why people should talk or think in this way. But it makes sense if you think about it. In the example that he cites, each question spurs on another question until finally four questions have been asked. In each instance the individual cannot answer the previous question until a question of his own has been answered. The first boy wants to know if the second boy is coming to a party, but the second boy has to know if he can bring a friend. But the first boy doesn’t want to give a carte blanche invitation, and the second boy doesn’t understand why his friend is being so nosey. Once the second boy understands the first boy’s concern for balance, he can explain whom he is considering inviting. That allows the first boy to give his permission for the additional guest to come, which in turn prompts the second boy to come, since he won’t be there by himself.

It is all rather like taking some mechanical gadget (such as a carburetor) apart to fix something that is the inside. First, you remove the housing, then some of the more exterior parts, and finally get to the heart of the problem. Then you put it back together in reverse order, but with a twist: now the device is working as it should. In the same way, the first part of an inversion breaks away the outer layers of the problem one by one until we get at the heart of that matter. Once the issue has been resolved, we can add the layers again, but now we see them no longer as the obstacles to our getting the problem fixed, but rather manifestations of the correction that has been made. Thus, as long as there are problems to be solved, inversions will be a natural way to present material.

Jesus, the Metaphorical Theologian

I’ve been reading a lot of Kenneth Bailey the past year or so. I find him a particularly valuable exegete because (1.) he knows the culture of the Middle East and is therefore attuned to cultural aspects that get overlooked by Western eyes, (2.) he is attentive to the literary structures of the parables and even the seemingly “disorganized” material of 1 Corinthians, and (3.) he understands Jesus as a metaphorical theologian. It is the last point that I want to explore a little further. As Bailey outlines in his introduction to Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15 and chapter 21 of Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, there are two ways to do theology: conceptually or metaphorically. We in the West tend to choose the former. We think in ideas—often abstract ideas—and then (if necessary) occasionally use a story or simile as an illustration. This is how the Apostle Paul seems to operate, and thus most Westerners find him a more sophisticated theologian than the story-telling Jesus. (I know, I know. Jesus is the Son of God who has all the intelligence of the Divine, but He seems to be too simplistic a thinker. He can’t even write a sentence that stretches out to half a chapter as Paul does!) But a metaphorical theologian finds the metaphor or parable as the primary thought and any conceptual interpretation around it as secondary. The hearer is to step inside the world of the metaphor and view the metaphor as the firmest reality; if need be, the concepts can be explained.

Bailey refers to Jesus’ parable as houses where one can look around and see a wide variety of truths. Eschewing the allegorical method and the quick “make one point of comparison and exit” method, he argues that the parables present a worldview that bears detailed examination—but not the kind that ignores the cultural roots from which they stem. Bailey also is quick to point out the intertextuality of our Lord’s parables. Our Lord’s Good Shepherd motif of Luke 15 and John 10 build on Old Testament passages such as Psalm 23, Jeremiah 23, and Ezekiel 34 (Finding the Lost, p. 68). The metaphor of the relationship between God and His people is the same throughout these passages, but there are subtle differences. The Jeremiah, Ezekiel, John, and (as Bailey argues) Luke passages speak of bad shepherds, while that is not the concern of Psalm 23. Ezekiel and our Lord (in John) distinguish between bad and good sheep, but none of the others do. All the passages speak of sheep being returned to the fold, but in Psalm 23 and Luke 15, it is a return to God, in Jeremiah it is a return to the land, and in Ezekiel it is both. Thus, a metaphorical theologian such as our Lord (and for that matter, most if not all of the Old Testament prophets) are not content to tell a story, but to craft and re-craft old stories, adding here and trimming there and altering elsewhere to cast a new emphasis on a familiar story. And thus Isaiah’s story of Israel as the bad vineyard becomes our Lord’s story of the Sanhedrin as the bad vineyard workers—a similar overall conceptual frame, but a different emphasis.

If you read the Scriptures carefully, you will find that a phrase or word in the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament) often provokes an image or metaphor in the mind of one of the prophets, which in turn prompts our Lord to construe a parable in a particular way. Far from being haphazard or merely cute, these parables of our Lord have a theological depth that we wrongly underestimate.

I am too much of a Westerner to be a metaphorical theologian. But reading Bailey on this topic has not only allowed me to understand the parables of our Lord better, but also to explain why I have disliked most of the sermon illustrations I have heard over the years. I have always discerned that such stories were trying to be as profound as our Lord’s parables, but failed somehow or another. Most sermon illustrations have little to do with the text or even the point being made by the preacher, but are simply ear candy to keep the listeners engaged. Bailey’s division between conceptual and metaphorical theology explains why those sermon illustrations fall flat: they are mere illustrations of the “more important” abstract concepts that the preacher is trying to communicate. They are huts or ragged tents compared to the solid houses our Lord built.

Just a Couple Dozen Topics—That’s All

In my last post, I argued that you could reduce the content of the Book of Concord to a couple dozen topics. You can consider this blog entry to be “the footnotes” for that post. I have arranged the content in outline format since some of the topics are clearly subcategories of other topics. You’ll need to know the following abbreviations: AC = Augsburg Confession; Ap. = Apology; SA = Smalcald Articles; Treatise = Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope; SC = Small Catechism; LC = Large Catechism; and FC = Formula of Concord. The numbering system of the Apology is somewhat convoluted and varies by edition, but I have followed the Kolb/Wengert numbering system since it lines up with that of the Augsburg Confession.

 

Often these articles may touch on some other topics tangentially, such as when Luther’s comments on the mass in SA 2:2 also deal with purgatory, the invocation of saints, and other topics. I have not tried to note every such subtopic because (as I argued in my last post) there is a particular coherence in the worldview that would guarantee that a Lutheran view of the mass would be in line with the Lutheran view of purgatory and vice versa.

By the way, the picture I have chosen to illustrate this blog entry illustrates that I am not the first to think that the various topics of the confessions cohere with one another. This is a sixteenth century woodcut that portrays the various topics of the Augsburg Confession as essentially seven branches of a lampstand illuminated by the Holy Spirit and grounded on the Scriptures and Christ. If you can read German, try to enlarge the picture and give it a closer look. It packs a lot of theology into a brief amount of space. (I downloaded the picture from Wiki Commons, where I get a lot of my free, out-of-copyright-protection pictures that I post here.)

I.                   God/Trinity: AC 1; Ap. 1; SA 1; SC 2; LC 2.

II.                Sin/Anthropology of the Fallen State: AC 19; Ap. 19; SA 3:1.

A.                Original Sin: AC 2; Ap. 2; FC 1.

B.                 Free will: AC 18; Ap. 18; SA 3:1; FC 2.

III.             The Law: SA 3:2; SC 1; LC 1; FC 5, 6.

IV.             Christ/His two natures/Unity of His person: AC 3; Ap. 3; SA 1; SC 2; LC 2; FC 3, 8, 9, 12.

V.                Justification: AC 4; Ap. 4; SA 2:1; 3:13; FC 3.

VI.             Repentance: AC 12; Ap. 12; SA 3:3.

VII.          Predestination/Election: FC 11.

VIII.       Ministry/Preaching office: AC 5, AC 14; Ap. 14; SA 3:4, 10.

A.                Clerical marriage: AC 23; Ap. 23; SA 3:11.

B.                 Power of bishops and of the pope: AC 28; Ap. 28; SA 2:4; Treatise.

IX.             Sanctification/good works: AC 6, AC 20; Ap. 4, Ap. 20; SA 3:13; FC 4.

X.                The church: AC 7, AC 8; Ap. 7-8; SA 3:12.

A.                Church regulations and ceremonies: AC 15, AC 24, AC 26; Ap. 15, Ap. 24; SA 2:2; 3:15; FC 10.

B.                 Invocation of the saints: AC 21; Ap. 21; SA 2:2.

C.                 Monasticism: AC 27; Ap. 27; SA 2:3; 3:14.

XI.             The sacraments: AC 13; Ap. 13.

A.                Baptism: AC 9; Ap. 9; SC 4; LC 4; SA 3:5.

B.                 The Lord’s Supper: AC 10; Ap. 10; SA 3:6; SC 6; LC 6; FC 7.

C.                 Two kinds in the sacrament: AC 22; Ap. 22.

D.                (Private) confession and absolution: AC 11, AC 25; Ap. 11; SA 3:7-9; SC 5; LC 5.

XII.          Government and secular life: AC 16; Ap. 16; FC 12.

XIII.       The return of Christ: AC 17; Ap. 17.

Why We Need the Longer Creeds

The reader of my last two posts is probably aware that I am dwelling on a particular theme: what value is there in the oft derided “institutional church”? So far we have seen that the church will invariably develop an institutional side to it. I have also argued that creeds and confessions are an integral part of the Christian church, for believers in Christ and their teachers alike. Those who believe in a “creedless Christianity” often end up with a formula that often reads like a creed. People may try to escape creeds and confessions, but cannot.

Perhaps, though, the problem isn’t with having creeds and confessions, but rather insisting on particular creeds. Why cannot we all just accept something like the Apostles’ Creed and be done with it? Why do we Lutherans insist on our pastors confessing all the confessions that make up the Book of Concord rather than a much shorter creed? After all, if creeds are meant to be brief summaries of the Christian faith, the Book of Concord does not have economy of words. And even if one acknowledges the right of Lutherans to confess something like the confessions in the Book of Concord, cannot we acknowledge various other confessions used by other churches—such as the Second Helvetic Confession or the Westminster Confession or the Thirty-Nine Articles or the New Hampshire Baptist Confession—as equally orthodox, thereby meriting their adherents a right to the pulpits and altars of Lutheran churches?

First of all, we should not be intimidated by the size of the Book of Concord. At first glance, it looks as if it must have hundreds of doctrines for people to believe in. But there are only 21 doctrinal topics (and 7 matters of practice) that are addressed in the Augsburg Confession. These same topics are repeated in the Apology. Much of what the Smalcald Articles has to say can be found in the Augsburg Confession, and the Formula of Concord (the most detailed of the confessions) addressed a dozen topics that had been handled at least in a cursory fashion in earlier confessions. Thus, the number of topics to be found in the Lutheran confessions is not that large. Furthermore, if you were to print only the doctrinal statements and not the arguments for them (whether exegesis of biblical passages or appeals to history and the church fathers or refutations of opponents’ arguments), you would end up with something the size of a smallish monograph. (Of course, even though Lutherans pledge themselves only to the doctrinal content of the Book of Concord, we find it helpful to read the exegesis and argumentation for particular points of doctrine. Serious Lutherans may disagree with the exegesis of a particular passage or two, but no one who thinks that all of the exegesis in the confessions is rot and nonsense is likely to be a serious Lutheran.)

Moreover, you would find that the answers given on one topic cohere with the answers given on another. It is difficult to believe in the pervasive power of original sin, for example, and still insist that a believer can merit their salvation by their own works. It is not surprising, then, to see that Lutherans believe both that original sin retains its power in believers’ lives and that we are justified solely by grace through faith, while Rome believes that original sin is abolished by baptism and that believers can through grace attain perfection—and indeed must do so before entering heaven. Not surprisingly, Rome sees purgatory as a necessary means to get the less than perfect into heaven, while Lutherans see it as a needless idea and one that obscures salvation through faith in Christ. The answers given by each confession on original sin, justification, and purgatory line up. Thus, it would be difficult to adopt a Roman view of purgatory and original sin, but a Lutheran view of justification (or vice versa).

That also explains why we Lutherans do not accept other confessions of faith (such as those I named in the second paragraph) as equally legitimate as our own. To be sure, there are many commonalities, insofar as they all acknowledge the Trinity and the deity of Christ. Some acknowledge a similar position on justification. But one finds a serious disagreement between the Lutheran Confessions on the one hand and those of the Reformed, Arminians, and Baptists on the other hand over several key topics: the nature and use of the sacraments; baptism; the Lord’s Supper; the perfection that can be attained in the Christian life; the scope of free will; eternal predestination and the use of the doctrine of election; and the relationship of the two natures in Christ, to name a few. It isn’t merely that we disagree on a few topics, but that each confessional stance has its own overall point of view that gives rise to the disagreements on individual topics, much as Lutherans and Roman Catholics have different presuppositions that lead to their divergent views on original sin, justification, and purgatory.

We rejoice to the extent that the various major confessions—Roman, Eastern, Lutheran, Reformed, Arminian, Baptist, and Pentecostal—confess the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and other core Christian doctrines. But there are still major differences in these confessions over important topics—topics that Lutherans see as part of essential Christian doctrine. For example, we Lutherans wouldn’t like to see anyone discourage Christians by teaching them that they can achieve perfection while still here on earth. But Arminians wouldn’t like to see anyone discourage Christians by teaching them that they cannot achieve perfection while still here on earth. Lutherans find perfectionism to be a most destructive and damnable teaching, while Arminians find it to be a most comforting and encouraging teaching. To hear both messages preached from the same pulpit would confuse the ordinary Christian in the pew, especially since both Lutherans and Arminians insist that this is an important teaching, one that cannot be ignored or swept under the rug.

Our confessions remind us then that we Christians still have unfinished business. We are not yet in agreement even on important and fundamental questions, but must still work to bring about unity in teaching. The Reformation raised several questions on crucial topics, but no one answer was given by all Christians. Thus, our different confessions remind us that we can neither ignore these matters nor find agreement on them as of yet. Our divergent confessions underscore the doctrinal divisions that underlie the ecclesiastical divisions. If we want to heal the latter, we will have to deal seriously with the former. That is why ignoring later confessions and opting for only the Apostles’ Creed won’t work today.