As Lutherans consider what the most appropriate way is to arrange their worship services, we naturally turn to Augsburg Confession article 24 (hereafter AC 24). That article explains what the practice of the Lutheran reformers had been: they retained the traditional liturgy with great reverence, although they made some minor changes to it (AC 24.1-2). However, at least one person has objected that this is merely a description of the way that Lutherans were worshipping in 1530, when the Augsburg Confession was written, and is not necessarily normative for Lutheran worship in 2011. After all, AC 24.2 states that some vernacular hymns have been added to the Latin chants—a situation that no longer characterizes even the most conservative of liturgical circles, where little if any Latin is used. Thus, it seems as if AC 24 has little directly to say to us today.
This objection, however, overlooks one major truth, a truth that anyone who has studied literature of any kind ought to know. The descriptive is never merely descriptive. There is always something to be taken away—an attitude to be adopted, a lesson to be learned, a pattern to be emulated. And, thus, we should not expect the descriptive passages in the confessions (or, for that matter, in the Scriptures) to be merely trivial historical information to be quickly forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant. And this is doubly true when a description is part of an argument in a given work.
Lutherans were not describing their worship practices to Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire with idle intent. AC 24, like all of AC 22-28, is an explanation of Lutheran “innovations”: giving the laity the blood of Christ (AC 22), allowing priests to marry (AC 23), changing how the private confession of sins was handled (AC 25), changing the rules on fasting (AC 26), allowing monks and nuns to abandon their vocations (AC 27), and limiting the purview of bishops (AC 28). In each of these instances Philipp Melanchthon, the author of the Augsburg Confession, argued that Lutherans were following sound, biblical practices and were in agreement with the church fathers and the traditions of the church. This was not an argument made in a vacuum. In 1530 it wasn’t clear to most people—Protestant or Roman Catholic—who Lutherans were and what they believed. And since some hotheads were running around Germany at that time overturning civil society, engaging in revolt, and leading people into general debauchery, the Lutherans had to distinguish themselves from such people. And so throughout the Augsburg Confession, but especially in the section on the practices (AC 22-28), Lutherans insist that they are good catholics (small c) who are trying to correct Roman innovations by returning to an older, historical practice.
It is in this context that they explain their worship services. They are not schismatics or heretics, but follow the usual rites of the mass (AC 24.1; the references throughout this discussion are to the Latin version of AC 24). Based on an apostolic command, they have added elements in the vernacular so that people can understand the mass better (24.2-3). But this was not controversial since there were vernacular hymns used in the mass in pre-Reformation times.
Most of the article deals with two controversial “innovations”: encouraging frequent communion (24.5-9, 34-39) and stopping the buying and selling of private masses (24.10-33). In essence, the mass was being transformed: no longer was it a private mercantile transaction where a priest (often alone without a server, which even the Council of Trent would later recognize to be wrong) said a mass for someone’s benefit and no one communed; instead it was to be a communal worship service where people were expected to receive the sacrament.
At first glance, all this seemed contrary to church tradition and historical practice, but Melanchthon argues that the Roman practice is actually contrary to the longer history of the Christian church, as well as the church canons and the teachings of Scripture and the church fathers. Rome had come to teach that having a mass said for oneself was safer than communing. Thus, hardly anyone communed more than once or twice a year, even though masses were being celebrated practically hourly at every side altar in the church. The Lutherans responded that people were being communed only after due instruction and admonition (24.6-9). They were not distributing the sacrament irresponsibly. Moreover, the mass was to be a public celebration of the Lord’s Supper, with the distribution of the elements as the norm, as attested by church fathers such as Ambrose (24.33), Gregory (24.35), Chrysostom (24.36), canon law of the most ancient and revered kind (24.37-38), the Scriptures (24.39), and church history (24.41). In addition, private masses reflect a misunderstanding of sacrifice (24.21-27), justification (24.28-29), and the remembering of Christ (24.30-33). Thus, if anyone was to be faulted for violating church tradition and bringing in radical innovations, it was the bishops under Rome, who ignored both canon law and apostolic mandate (24.10-13) and permitted the abuses of the private masses that brought scandal to Christianity (24.14-20). Thus, Lutherans were the ones who maintained the tradition, and Rome was the one who innovated. It was precisely out of respect for not only Scripture but also the witness of the church throughout the ages that the ceremonies of the mass were largely kept, although the number of masses was reduced to those where people could actually attend (24.40).
This is a tightly argued article that uses catholic arguments—Scripture and tradition—to show that an alleged innovation (frequent communion) is actually historic practice and that an alleged established practice (private masses) is really a medieval innovation. But other than changing these two practices to follow more ancient usage, the Lutherans did not change the liturgy much. Why? They were catholics at heart—not Romanists, to be sure, but people who saw themselves in the continuity of church history.
Of course, one should not romanticize about what the historic liturgy was, as if it has always been the same in all places and eras. Church tradition has allowed variety and flexibility of customs while maintaining a common core. (That is a topic for a blog all of its own.) But AC 24 was never about how much Latin was or was not in a service or how many times people were to genuflect, but about whether or not Lutherans see themselves as schismatics. It powerfully warns Lutherans today not to follow the sectarianism of American Protestantism, which tends to believe that the church didn’t exist between the death of the Apostle John and the birth of Michael Card. It soundly rejects modern church-planting gurus who emphasize telling prospective members “We’re not your father’s church” and who poke fun at the stodgy saints of yesteryear. In short, it warns us against letting a truncated and schismatic ecclesiology shape our liturgy. And thus AC 24 retains its normative power today among serious Lutherans.
© 2011 James A. Kellerman
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
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
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
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday (Feb. 13), 2011
And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”
Beloved in Christ, there are vast segments of Christianity that believe that to be a good Christian you must be seeking one kind of glorious experience or another. They might not all agree on what that experience must be, but they agree that a Christian should be living a wonderful and victorious life. For some that means having frequent mystical experiences of oneness with God. For others it means speaking exuberantly in tongues. For still others it means living in a state of perfection without any trace of sin. Whatever it is that they think is a glorified state of being, they believe that we should be experiencing it fully right now.
However, those Christians who embrace a sound, biblical way of thinking will not draw the same conclusion. For us it is the cross that is front and center. It is the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross that is foremost in a Christian’s life. The cross of Jesus reminds us of the enormity cost of our sin. The cross calls us to repent of our sins, but it also proclaims that we are saved by the death of Jesus. It isn’t our glorious experiences that will save us, but the death of the Son of God. And thus we should not expect glory in this life. But doesn’t today’s gospel seem to refute us? Here is glory in abundance. Here is nothing but pure, unadulterated glory. It is a mega dose of glory, enough to knock the disciples nearly unconscious. Where are the cross and the suffering and the shame? They are nowhere to be found. Here is nothing but glory.
Of course, it was a glorious day for the disciples. No one should think otherwise. We too experience our moments of glory, just as those three disciples got to see the glory of Christ on the mountain. We emphasize the cross instead of glory, but don’t think that there will never be glorious occasions such as this. In fact, we look forward to experiencing glorious moments such as this for all eternity. The three disciples had a glimpse of Christ’s glory, a vision of the glory to be, such as we will always see in the resurrection life. All Christians agree that in the life to come there will be only glory. But the question remains: during this life should we expect to experience only glory or should we expect to experience the cross of suffering and sorrow? Should we focus only on accumulating moments of glory or should we rather expect our Lord to place a cross upon us? And how do we handle moments of glory and moments of the cross?
Peter didn’t handle this glorious situation well. Jesus was speaking, but Peter was so overcome by his emotions that he interrupted Him. Furthermore, his comments showed that he really didn’t understand the situation. He offered to build three booths, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah—as if all three were equally prophets before God. Peter was so confused in what he was saying that God the Father had to cut him off. He drew Peter’s attention to Jesus and said to listen to Him, for He was the Father’s beloved Son. It is not that Peter could not listen to Moses or Elijah, but that instead Peter should listen most attentively to Christ—even if Christ was speaking about “[going] to Jerusalem and [suffering] many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and [being] killed, and on the third day [being] raised.”
If you’re tempted to be too hard on Peter, you should realize he did what any one of us would have done. In fact, I wonder if he might not have done better than most of us. When we are put in a situation of great glory, we can easily become spiritual infants. We forget whatever we have previously learned. We babble nonsense as Peter did. And then when we are reprimanded as Peter was, we fall in fear on our faces. Glory turns us into blithering fools.
Why is that? We always had been blithering fools. We just didn’t know it until the thoughts of glory drove away any restraint. When things are going grand for us, we are tempted to show off the pride that resides inside of us. But “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Our arrogance causes us to stumble. That is why glorious moments are dangerous to us. There is nothing wrong with the glorious moments themselves. Jesus even basked in such glory. But He could handle it without falling into sin, whereas we could not.
And thus the problem is our sin, not the experience of glory. And that is why the best news that we can hear is that we have a Savior, who rescues us from our sin. He could have enjoyed nothing but glory forever, but He knew that we needed to be saved. And so He went off to die on a cross. He endured that most painful and shameful death because He cared about more than Himself or a little glory. He cared about us. But—irony of ironies—it is precisely because He cared more about us than His own glory that He is now exalted and glorified for all time. He doesn’t cling to that glory in a selfish way, which is why it is more than appropriate for Him to have it.
We Christians cannot make sense of glory unless we are willing to walk in the way of the cross. Peter talked foolishly because he looked only at the glory of the moment and didn’t want to hear our Lord’s instructions about His death. That is why our Lord told him as they were coming down the mountain, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” Only when Christ had been crucified and raised from the dead would Peter be able to put everything into its proper context. Only when we see God’s greatest work in the cross of Christ will we be able to understand the ups and downs of life.
Oh, yes, Peter’s experience was an up moment. He was given a real privilege to be one of the three chosen to see this vision. And God gives us glorious moments now and then, too. They are to be treasured as gifts, for they remind us of an even greater glory to come. Perhaps we are moved by seeing a perfect sunset. We are being reminded of a time when God and the Lamb will be our sun that never goes down. Perhaps we are honored at our job or in our community. We are being reminded of a time when God will honor all His faithful people at a banquet that will never end. Perhaps we are just having a great time with our friends and it seems to be a perfect day. We are being reminded of a time when we will enjoy a never ending fellowship with all the saints.
And so our glorious moments are to be cherished as visions of the glory to come. But Peter couldn’t spend the rest of his life on that mountaintop and neither can we. Experiences like those are glimpses of the future glory, not the full package. And thus we thank God for those experiences and we consider how best to make use of them. Perhaps the most important truth that we can learn is that we won’t be learning the most during our mountaintop experiences. Yes, we may think about them later on and draw some conclusions later, but we will often lack that wisdom at the time. Peter talked like a fool on the mountain, but years later, as he knew his death was drawing near, he wrote, “We have something more sure [than the vision], the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Peter understood the importance of the prophecies of Scripture by that point, but he had been too busy yakking on the mountain to pay any attention to Moses or Elijah, let alone Jesus.
It was only by going down into the valley and paying careful attention to the words of Jesus and following Him all the way to Jerusalem and to the cross that he learned what that glorious vision had meant. It was only by seeing himself not as a success—one of the hand picked individuals chosen to hobnob with Moses and Elijah—but as a failure, a person who denied Jesus and ran away from Him, that Peter came to understand who Jesus was. It was only when Peter knew that he was a forgiven sinner that he could be an apostle. It is only when we are willing to go into the valley of sorrow that we learn what we should have learned from our glorious moments.
So let us not be frightened by the fact that we have to leave the mountain, for Christ is with us in the valley no less than on the mountaintop. Christ is at the heart of our life, wherever we are. Whether He is transfigured before us or simply plods along to the cross, He remains faithfully by our side. And therefore we are not frightened by the way of the cross nor will we cling mindlessly to glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”
Beloved in Christ, there are vast segments of Christianity that believe that to be a good Christian you must be seeking one kind of glorious experience or another. They might not all agree on what that experience must be, but they agree that a Christian should be living a wonderful and victorious life. For some that means having frequent mystical experiences of oneness with God. For others it means speaking exuberantly in tongues. For still others it means living in a state of perfection without any trace of sin. Whatever it is that they think is a glorified state of being, they believe that we should be experiencing it fully right now.
However, those Christians who embrace a sound, biblical way of thinking will not draw the same conclusion. For us it is the cross that is front and center. It is the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross that is foremost in a Christian’s life. The cross of Jesus reminds us of the enormity cost of our sin. The cross calls us to repent of our sins, but it also proclaims that we are saved by the death of Jesus. It isn’t our glorious experiences that will save us, but the death of the Son of God. And thus we should not expect glory in this life. But doesn’t today’s gospel seem to refute us? Here is glory in abundance. Here is nothing but pure, unadulterated glory. It is a mega dose of glory, enough to knock the disciples nearly unconscious. Where are the cross and the suffering and the shame? They are nowhere to be found. Here is nothing but glory.
Of course, it was a glorious day for the disciples. No one should think otherwise. We too experience our moments of glory, just as those three disciples got to see the glory of Christ on the mountain. We emphasize the cross instead of glory, but don’t think that there will never be glorious occasions such as this. In fact, we look forward to experiencing glorious moments such as this for all eternity. The three disciples had a glimpse of Christ’s glory, a vision of the glory to be, such as we will always see in the resurrection life. All Christians agree that in the life to come there will be only glory. But the question remains: during this life should we expect to experience only glory or should we expect to experience the cross of suffering and sorrow? Should we focus only on accumulating moments of glory or should we rather expect our Lord to place a cross upon us? And how do we handle moments of glory and moments of the cross?
Peter didn’t handle this glorious situation well. Jesus was speaking, but Peter was so overcome by his emotions that he interrupted Him. Furthermore, his comments showed that he really didn’t understand the situation. He offered to build three booths, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah—as if all three were equally prophets before God. Peter was so confused in what he was saying that God the Father had to cut him off. He drew Peter’s attention to Jesus and said to listen to Him, for He was the Father’s beloved Son. It is not that Peter could not listen to Moses or Elijah, but that instead Peter should listen most attentively to Christ—even if Christ was speaking about “[going] to Jerusalem and [suffering] many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and [being] killed, and on the third day [being] raised.”
If you’re tempted to be too hard on Peter, you should realize he did what any one of us would have done. In fact, I wonder if he might not have done better than most of us. When we are put in a situation of great glory, we can easily become spiritual infants. We forget whatever we have previously learned. We babble nonsense as Peter did. And then when we are reprimanded as Peter was, we fall in fear on our faces. Glory turns us into blithering fools.
Why is that? We always had been blithering fools. We just didn’t know it until the thoughts of glory drove away any restraint. When things are going grand for us, we are tempted to show off the pride that resides inside of us. But “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Our arrogance causes us to stumble. That is why glorious moments are dangerous to us. There is nothing wrong with the glorious moments themselves. Jesus even basked in such glory. But He could handle it without falling into sin, whereas we could not.
And thus the problem is our sin, not the experience of glory. And that is why the best news that we can hear is that we have a Savior, who rescues us from our sin. He could have enjoyed nothing but glory forever, but He knew that we needed to be saved. And so He went off to die on a cross. He endured that most painful and shameful death because He cared about more than Himself or a little glory. He cared about us. But—irony of ironies—it is precisely because He cared more about us than His own glory that He is now exalted and glorified for all time. He doesn’t cling to that glory in a selfish way, which is why it is more than appropriate for Him to have it.
We Christians cannot make sense of glory unless we are willing to walk in the way of the cross. Peter talked foolishly because he looked only at the glory of the moment and didn’t want to hear our Lord’s instructions about His death. That is why our Lord told him as they were coming down the mountain, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” Only when Christ had been crucified and raised from the dead would Peter be able to put everything into its proper context. Only when we see God’s greatest work in the cross of Christ will we be able to understand the ups and downs of life.
Oh, yes, Peter’s experience was an up moment. He was given a real privilege to be one of the three chosen to see this vision. And God gives us glorious moments now and then, too. They are to be treasured as gifts, for they remind us of an even greater glory to come. Perhaps we are moved by seeing a perfect sunset. We are being reminded of a time when God and the Lamb will be our sun that never goes down. Perhaps we are honored at our job or in our community. We are being reminded of a time when God will honor all His faithful people at a banquet that will never end. Perhaps we are just having a great time with our friends and it seems to be a perfect day. We are being reminded of a time when we will enjoy a never ending fellowship with all the saints.
And so our glorious moments are to be cherished as visions of the glory to come. But Peter couldn’t spend the rest of his life on that mountaintop and neither can we. Experiences like those are glimpses of the future glory, not the full package. And thus we thank God for those experiences and we consider how best to make use of them. Perhaps the most important truth that we can learn is that we won’t be learning the most during our mountaintop experiences. Yes, we may think about them later on and draw some conclusions later, but we will often lack that wisdom at the time. Peter talked like a fool on the mountain, but years later, as he knew his death was drawing near, he wrote, “We have something more sure [than the vision], the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Peter understood the importance of the prophecies of Scripture by that point, but he had been too busy yakking on the mountain to pay any attention to Moses or Elijah, let alone Jesus.
It was only by going down into the valley and paying careful attention to the words of Jesus and following Him all the way to Jerusalem and to the cross that he learned what that glorious vision had meant. It was only by seeing himself not as a success—one of the hand picked individuals chosen to hobnob with Moses and Elijah—but as a failure, a person who denied Jesus and ran away from Him, that Peter came to understand who Jesus was. It was only when Peter knew that he was a forgiven sinner that he could be an apostle. It is only when we are willing to go into the valley of sorrow that we learn what we should have learned from our glorious moments.
So let us not be frightened by the fact that we have to leave the mountain, for Christ is with us in the valley no less than on the mountaintop. Christ is at the heart of our life, wherever we are. Whether He is transfigured before us or simply plods along to the cross, He remains faithfully by our side. And therefore we are not frightened by the way of the cross nor will we cling mindlessly to glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sermon for Epiphany 5 (February 6), 2011
[Jesus] put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
Beloved in Christ, we heard the parable just a few moments ago. Let us hear our Lord’s explanation of it: “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” These words, along with the gospel previously read, serve as our text.
Beloved in Christ, we tend to underestimate God’s righteousness and His mercy, and so we are ill prepared for the Day of Judgment. We are tempted to think that God will never judge the world. He will never hold up His righteousness as a standard by which to judge our works. And consequently we tend to minimize His mercy. We assume that we won’t need it and, if we happen to need it on that day, we will well deserve it. Or we assume that God’s mercy might extend to us, but not to other sinners.
Our Lord’s parable of the weeds and the wheat teaches us to think differently, both about the world as it is presently constituted and about the Day of Judgment. It reminds us that we live in a world where the most pious of Christians must live cheek by jowl with the most debauched of the heathen. This is not something new to our age. Throughout the history of the church, Abel has lived next to Cain, Lot next to Sodom, Israel next to the Canaanites, Elijah next to Jezebel, and Christ next to Herod and the Pharisees. As long as the earth remains in its current form, there will be no lack of evil here on earth. But the earth will not remain in its current form forever. There will be a Judgment Day. There will be a reckoning—a harvest of the nations and a sorting out of wheat from weed. On that day those who oppose the Lord will be banished and those who believe in Christ as their Savior will experience only joy.
In the meantime we suffer as wickedness and godliness coexist and are often hard to distinguish. And our Lord’s parable is meant to get us thinking. He paints a rather bleak picture, a worst case scenario. What if weeds were always weeds and could never change? Now we know that God calls sinners to repentance and that one who today is a weed—an unrepentant, defiant sinner, in other words—could tomorrow be a fruitful ear of wheat—a faithful Christian, in other words. But let’s say for the sake of argument, our Lord is saying, that wheat is always wheat and weeds are always weeds, that there is no possibility of anyone ever repenting or backsliding. In such a case would it make sense to pluck weeds as soon as they sprout up and manifest themselves as weeds? In other words, should we nip evil in the bud?
No. The reason the farmer in the parable would not pluck up the weeds is that he knew it was not always easy to distinguish wheat from weeds. Moreover, even if you could clearly distinguish the weeds from the wheat, the weeds often grow around the roots of the wheat and you cannot pull up the weeds without simultaneously pulling up the wheat. In the same way, it is not always easy to distinguish Christians from unbelievers. It’s easy enough for people to behave decently; they get the credit for being an upstanding citizen and they don’t have to worry about getting into trouble. But that doesn’t make them heirs of heaven, for God demands us to be more righteous than that. He demands absolute perfection. We can either try to attain that on our own and fail, or we can trust that God will give us that perfection by pronouncing us righteous because Christ has removed our guilt and forgiven our sins. And so we should not think that everyone who has a helpful attitude and a nice demeanor is part of God’s people.
By the same token we should not write off those whose sins are obvious as wicked unbelievers. We Christians are forgiven our sins and the guilt is completely removed, but that doesn’t mean that our sinful nature has been removed. All Christians, no matter how pious, struggle against a sinful part of themselves. And some people struggle more visibly than others. That is to say, their sins are easier to spot. But that does not make them worse. Someone who blows up on every little occasion is easier to spot than someone who nurses a grudge, all the while smiling and making nice. But both are dealing with the sin of anger. If we were not careful, we might write off the person who loses his temper as an unbeliever, all the while praising the one who bears a grudge as a fine Christian example.
It is not easy to tell the hypocrites from the true believers or to tell the one who is unrepentant from the one who keeps lapsing but fights bitterly against temptation. And that is why our Lord warns us against making the final judgment before Judgment Day. Now you might say, doesn’t our Lord contradict Himself five chapters later, when He tells us to admonish our brother or sister in Christ who sins? He even says that if they don’t listen to us, we should kick them out of the church! Isn’t He telling us to do some weeding before the Last Day and to pronounce judgments where we should not? Not at all. Real Christians do not take sin lightly—in our own lives or in the lives of our fellow believers. If you read Matthew 18 carefully, you will see that our Lord lays out a process to make sure that people are living repentant lives and are not staying stuck in unrepentance. If someone sins, is admonished, and repents, he or she is to be forgiven. And even if in a single day they sin and ask for forgiveness seventy times seven times, we must still forgive them, for we are not seeking their condemnation. We want them (and us) to repent constantly of sin and to put all our trust in Christ. Even if someone stubbornly refuses to repent and is excluded, that is not a final judgment, for at the smallest hint or repentance they are to be welcomed back into the fold of the church.
And so sinners find mercy. Yes, that often means that hypocrites fool us by pretending to repent and we respond by forgiving them and encouraging them with God’s love. Hypocrites may very well laugh at us for being so generous and even downright prodigal in dispensing forgiveness, love, and mercy. And even a saint now and then raises an eyebrow and wonders if we aren’t getting a little too lax. But let us make sure that we know why God doesn’t want us to pull up the weeds now. He doesn’t want any wheat destroyed, even accidentally, as would happen if we were overly zealous to remove all weeds.
It is for the sake of the wheat that the weeds are tolerated. It is for the sake of the saints that the wicked are allowed to prosper. God would rather let ten overtly wicked people flourish in this life rather than let one of His weaker but faithful people be accidentally rooted out. We in the church sometimes forget that. And the wicked certainly do not grasp that point. If the weeds in the parable could talk and you had asked one of them, they would say, “The field is ours. We love the person who sowed us in this field and made sure that we could grow up nice and strong. We love it that we can roughhouse the wheat. And nobody is going to do anything to stop us.” Of course, the weeds will think differently, come harvest day. In the same way, the wicked think that the world is their peach and they are meant to enjoy it. They think that they are having a grand time while we have too many scruples to enjoy life as it really ought to be enjoyed. They don’t understand that it is only for the sake of the saints—especially the weaker of the saints—that the wicked are allowed to prosper and are not made to face their judgment in this life. It was for the sake of ten righteous people that Sodom was not destroyed. In fact, even when ten righteous people could not be found there, the mere presence of Lot and his family (four people at most) kept Sodom from being destroyed. As soon as they left, God’s judgment fell upon the city. And so we wheat should understand that God is slow to judgment for our sake because He wants to give us greater time to repent and to experience His forgiveness. He is not just tolerant of evil for evil’s sake.
And so, beloved in Christ, we see that it is for our sake that God allows evil to remain in this world. And if weeds remained weeds and wheat remained wheat, it would still make sense not to try to pull the weeds in advance of the harvest. But weeds do not need to remain weeds. And so the person whom we know to be defiant against God today may well repent tomorrow and be a valuable stalk of wheat. If a farmer would spare a weed that he knows will never turn into a good plant, how much more should he spare a weed that might become a good plant one day!
Beloved in the Lord, if you have stubbornly refused to repent, now is the time to turn from evil. Now is the time to stop being a weed. Our Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross that you might be forever a precious stalk of wheat in His kingdom. Do not rely upon your own righteous, but trust in Him. And those of you who have long heard this message and count yourselves good stalks of wheat in our Lord’s field, continue in what you have heard and believed. Continue to repent of your sins and trust in Christ and His righteousness. And do not be disappointed to find weeds among the field, but pray the Lord of harvest for His protection and guidance. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
Beloved in Christ, we heard the parable just a few moments ago. Let us hear our Lord’s explanation of it: “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” These words, along with the gospel previously read, serve as our text.
Beloved in Christ, we tend to underestimate God’s righteousness and His mercy, and so we are ill prepared for the Day of Judgment. We are tempted to think that God will never judge the world. He will never hold up His righteousness as a standard by which to judge our works. And consequently we tend to minimize His mercy. We assume that we won’t need it and, if we happen to need it on that day, we will well deserve it. Or we assume that God’s mercy might extend to us, but not to other sinners.
Our Lord’s parable of the weeds and the wheat teaches us to think differently, both about the world as it is presently constituted and about the Day of Judgment. It reminds us that we live in a world where the most pious of Christians must live cheek by jowl with the most debauched of the heathen. This is not something new to our age. Throughout the history of the church, Abel has lived next to Cain, Lot next to Sodom, Israel next to the Canaanites, Elijah next to Jezebel, and Christ next to Herod and the Pharisees. As long as the earth remains in its current form, there will be no lack of evil here on earth. But the earth will not remain in its current form forever. There will be a Judgment Day. There will be a reckoning—a harvest of the nations and a sorting out of wheat from weed. On that day those who oppose the Lord will be banished and those who believe in Christ as their Savior will experience only joy.
In the meantime we suffer as wickedness and godliness coexist and are often hard to distinguish. And our Lord’s parable is meant to get us thinking. He paints a rather bleak picture, a worst case scenario. What if weeds were always weeds and could never change? Now we know that God calls sinners to repentance and that one who today is a weed—an unrepentant, defiant sinner, in other words—could tomorrow be a fruitful ear of wheat—a faithful Christian, in other words. But let’s say for the sake of argument, our Lord is saying, that wheat is always wheat and weeds are always weeds, that there is no possibility of anyone ever repenting or backsliding. In such a case would it make sense to pluck weeds as soon as they sprout up and manifest themselves as weeds? In other words, should we nip evil in the bud?
No. The reason the farmer in the parable would not pluck up the weeds is that he knew it was not always easy to distinguish wheat from weeds. Moreover, even if you could clearly distinguish the weeds from the wheat, the weeds often grow around the roots of the wheat and you cannot pull up the weeds without simultaneously pulling up the wheat. In the same way, it is not always easy to distinguish Christians from unbelievers. It’s easy enough for people to behave decently; they get the credit for being an upstanding citizen and they don’t have to worry about getting into trouble. But that doesn’t make them heirs of heaven, for God demands us to be more righteous than that. He demands absolute perfection. We can either try to attain that on our own and fail, or we can trust that God will give us that perfection by pronouncing us righteous because Christ has removed our guilt and forgiven our sins. And so we should not think that everyone who has a helpful attitude and a nice demeanor is part of God’s people.
By the same token we should not write off those whose sins are obvious as wicked unbelievers. We Christians are forgiven our sins and the guilt is completely removed, but that doesn’t mean that our sinful nature has been removed. All Christians, no matter how pious, struggle against a sinful part of themselves. And some people struggle more visibly than others. That is to say, their sins are easier to spot. But that does not make them worse. Someone who blows up on every little occasion is easier to spot than someone who nurses a grudge, all the while smiling and making nice. But both are dealing with the sin of anger. If we were not careful, we might write off the person who loses his temper as an unbeliever, all the while praising the one who bears a grudge as a fine Christian example.
It is not easy to tell the hypocrites from the true believers or to tell the one who is unrepentant from the one who keeps lapsing but fights bitterly against temptation. And that is why our Lord warns us against making the final judgment before Judgment Day. Now you might say, doesn’t our Lord contradict Himself five chapters later, when He tells us to admonish our brother or sister in Christ who sins? He even says that if they don’t listen to us, we should kick them out of the church! Isn’t He telling us to do some weeding before the Last Day and to pronounce judgments where we should not? Not at all. Real Christians do not take sin lightly—in our own lives or in the lives of our fellow believers. If you read Matthew 18 carefully, you will see that our Lord lays out a process to make sure that people are living repentant lives and are not staying stuck in unrepentance. If someone sins, is admonished, and repents, he or she is to be forgiven. And even if in a single day they sin and ask for forgiveness seventy times seven times, we must still forgive them, for we are not seeking their condemnation. We want them (and us) to repent constantly of sin and to put all our trust in Christ. Even if someone stubbornly refuses to repent and is excluded, that is not a final judgment, for at the smallest hint or repentance they are to be welcomed back into the fold of the church.
And so sinners find mercy. Yes, that often means that hypocrites fool us by pretending to repent and we respond by forgiving them and encouraging them with God’s love. Hypocrites may very well laugh at us for being so generous and even downright prodigal in dispensing forgiveness, love, and mercy. And even a saint now and then raises an eyebrow and wonders if we aren’t getting a little too lax. But let us make sure that we know why God doesn’t want us to pull up the weeds now. He doesn’t want any wheat destroyed, even accidentally, as would happen if we were overly zealous to remove all weeds.
It is for the sake of the wheat that the weeds are tolerated. It is for the sake of the saints that the wicked are allowed to prosper. God would rather let ten overtly wicked people flourish in this life rather than let one of His weaker but faithful people be accidentally rooted out. We in the church sometimes forget that. And the wicked certainly do not grasp that point. If the weeds in the parable could talk and you had asked one of them, they would say, “The field is ours. We love the person who sowed us in this field and made sure that we could grow up nice and strong. We love it that we can roughhouse the wheat. And nobody is going to do anything to stop us.” Of course, the weeds will think differently, come harvest day. In the same way, the wicked think that the world is their peach and they are meant to enjoy it. They think that they are having a grand time while we have too many scruples to enjoy life as it really ought to be enjoyed. They don’t understand that it is only for the sake of the saints—especially the weaker of the saints—that the wicked are allowed to prosper and are not made to face their judgment in this life. It was for the sake of ten righteous people that Sodom was not destroyed. In fact, even when ten righteous people could not be found there, the mere presence of Lot and his family (four people at most) kept Sodom from being destroyed. As soon as they left, God’s judgment fell upon the city. And so we wheat should understand that God is slow to judgment for our sake because He wants to give us greater time to repent and to experience His forgiveness. He is not just tolerant of evil for evil’s sake.
And so, beloved in Christ, we see that it is for our sake that God allows evil to remain in this world. And if weeds remained weeds and wheat remained wheat, it would still make sense not to try to pull the weeds in advance of the harvest. But weeds do not need to remain weeds. And so the person whom we know to be defiant against God today may well repent tomorrow and be a valuable stalk of wheat. If a farmer would spare a weed that he knows will never turn into a good plant, how much more should he spare a weed that might become a good plant one day!
Beloved in the Lord, if you have stubbornly refused to repent, now is the time to turn from evil. Now is the time to stop being a weed. Our Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross that you might be forever a precious stalk of wheat in His kingdom. Do not rely upon your own righteous, but trust in Him. And those of you who have long heard this message and count yourselves good stalks of wheat in our Lord’s field, continue in what you have heard and believed. Continue to repent of your sins and trust in Christ and His righteousness. And do not be disappointed to find weeds among the field, but pray the Lord of harvest for His protection and guidance. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Original Sin and the Improvement of Society
In last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, Ron Grossman pointed out that there are two fundamentally different philosophies that govern the United States. One can be found in the writings of Jonathan Edwards and believes that human nature has hopelessly been corrupted by sin and thus we should not expect progress. The other is embodied in Thomas Jefferson’s praise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and assumes an optimistic future. Grossman then argues that this accounts for the fundamental political divide in the United States. Although Jefferson and Edwards would certainly have disagreed over human nature and the influence of original sin, it may not have necessarily shown up in their politics in quite the way that Grossman suggests.
It might be useful to consider first what is meant by original sin in Christian theology. Most Christians accept the notion that humanity was corrupted by Adam’s sin and so every human being is born with a propensity to sin and to rebel against God and His rules. But there the agreement ends. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that God removes original sin through baptism. Although people may still have concupiscence (which may lead people to sin), original sin has been completed removed and moral perfection is not beyond human possibility and has indeed been attained by the saints. Similarly, the Holiness tradition in Protestantism rejects the notion that Christians are held back in any way by a sinful nature; instead they believe that they too can and must achieve moral perfection. In fact, ever since the Second Great Awakening, few Protestants (whether mainline or evangelical) have put much stock in this doctrine and have had a rather cheery view of human nature.
The real exceptions to the rule have been those Lutherans and Calvinists who have hewn more closely to their confessions rather than follow the mainline or evangelical route. Thus, a view of original sin more like that of Edwards will be found among Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, but not in the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; likewise, one will find it taught less in the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA) than in the confessional Orthodox Presbyterian Church. These Lutherans and Calvinists largely agree on original sin, though they disagree on other matters. They confess that all human beings are tainted by original sin from the moment they are conceived (cf. Psalm 51:5); even though the taint of this sin is forgiven, their sinful nature (often called “the flesh” in the Bible) continues to reside in Christians and has to be battled, even by Christians, as Romans 6-7 demonstrates. Of course, Christians also receive a new nature (Colossians 2:11-15; 3:3-4, 9-10), but that does not mean that they have to stop their struggle against their sinful nature (see Colossians 3:5-8, 12-15). In fact, as the discourse of Colossians 2-3 and Romans 6-8 teaches us, we must acknowledge that a real change occurs when a Christian is baptized, while not at the same time denying that the sinful self remains—and also the need to struggle valiantly against it.
Thus, traditional Lutherans and Calvinists teach that a human being’s actions remain tainted by selfishness, pride, rebellion, and arrogance, even after a person has come to faith in Christ. Moral perfection will take place only after we die. However, it does not follow that people are as wicked as they can be and that this is the worst of all possible worlds, morally speaking, as is often assumed by people like Grossman and other critics of the Edwardian view of original sin. It does mean, though, that there is often something selfish about even the best of our works. For example, we may help a little old lady across the street, fully expecting a merit badge or at least the acclaim of our fellow citizens (no matter how humbly we may protest).
But even as we Lutherans (and our Calvinist friends) take a rather grim view of human nature, we are also unique among Christians in separating civil righteousness from true godliness, and this is a positive advance in theology and political science. While we grant that God is offended by the pride and selfishness that often lie behind our most altruistic deeds, we recognize that other human beings rightly are not. It matters little to a community whether a neighbor is helping the little old lady across the street out of love for God or out of a desire for praise. Regardless of their motives, we want people to behave in a decent manner. Thus, we can appeal to people’s selfish instincts to avoid the pain of punishment or to garner other people’s praise and rewards, and thus we use their innate sin as a means to bring about civil concord. Thus, the fact that people are thoroughly tainted by original sin does not prevent them from doing civil righteousness at a fairly sophisticated level. What it does do is prevent them from being righteous in God’s eyes by their own efforts. That kind of godliness requires God’s grace and forgiveness.
The doctrine of original sin in our theology serves to underscore the role of God’s grace. Not only does He save those who have rejected Him all along, He also saves those who have been following Him for years, for they need His help no less than the “worst” of sinners. And so this doctrine, like most articles of faith, is formulated to help the faithful understand their relationship to God. But this article of faith could also have a beneficial influence on society if people would take it seriously, regardless of whether or not they accept the rest of our theology.
First, we would not be so quick to demonize opponents. The same original sin that exists in them exists in each of us. This is not to trivialize the distinction between right and wrong or to say that one cannot take a moral stance on a given issue. It does, however, remind us that even if we happen to be right on a moral or political issue debated by our peers, we are not thereby necessarily right with God.
At the same time, those in leadership would be better equipped to avoid falling into temptation. History is littered with leaders who thought that an ordination or election to high office or embracing a noble cause would be enough to suppress all their inner demons. As in rock climbing, those who think themselves invincible are the ones most likely to fall.
We would also avoid utopian dreaming, which invariably ends in nightmares. Because for much of American history liberals have tended to be optimistic about human nature and the possibility of constructing a perfect society while conservatives have been skeptical of such things, Grossman nearly equates belief in original sin with a conservative political view. Indeed, one can see that much of the traditional conservative agenda—the separation of powers, a preference for the local over the national, and a reluctance to change the evils we know for evils we don’t—reflects a rather negative view of human nature. But conservatives have shown themselves to be just as naïve at times in their utopianism, as if a completely unregulated market or the abolition of all taxes would solve all our problems. (Can anyone say, "Ayn Rand"?) Both conservatives and liberals would do well to stop speaking in millennialist terms.
Instead, we should adopt a more realistic agenda. We will confess that we cannot ignore today’s evils, for that would be wicked, and yet we will also recognize that today’s evils are often the unintended consequences of solutions to yesterday’s evils, and the good and necessary reforms of today will become the basis for tomorrow’s evils. Given the fixity of human nature, we will realize that we cannot banish greed, lust, sloth, arrogance, and the other evils that plague the human condition. At most, we can stop one or more expressions of those vices or keep them in check. However, we may also be able to use one vice to offset another. For example, we may encourage people to engage in the vice of pride as we urge them to make generous charitable contributions. We encourage one of their vices, their pride, in order to offset the effects of another vice, their greed. We haven’t rid them of original sin or its resultant vices, but we have encouraged them to behave in a manner more befitting society. And thus we can foster positive change in society, if only we don’t delude ourselves into thinking that civil righteousness is the kingdom of God and the absence of original sin.
© 2011 James A. Kellerman
It might be useful to consider first what is meant by original sin in Christian theology. Most Christians accept the notion that humanity was corrupted by Adam’s sin and so every human being is born with a propensity to sin and to rebel against God and His rules. But there the agreement ends. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that God removes original sin through baptism. Although people may still have concupiscence (which may lead people to sin), original sin has been completed removed and moral perfection is not beyond human possibility and has indeed been attained by the saints. Similarly, the Holiness tradition in Protestantism rejects the notion that Christians are held back in any way by a sinful nature; instead they believe that they too can and must achieve moral perfection. In fact, ever since the Second Great Awakening, few Protestants (whether mainline or evangelical) have put much stock in this doctrine and have had a rather cheery view of human nature.
The real exceptions to the rule have been those Lutherans and Calvinists who have hewn more closely to their confessions rather than follow the mainline or evangelical route. Thus, a view of original sin more like that of Edwards will be found among Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, but not in the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; likewise, one will find it taught less in the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA) than in the confessional Orthodox Presbyterian Church. These Lutherans and Calvinists largely agree on original sin, though they disagree on other matters. They confess that all human beings are tainted by original sin from the moment they are conceived (cf. Psalm 51:5); even though the taint of this sin is forgiven, their sinful nature (often called “the flesh” in the Bible) continues to reside in Christians and has to be battled, even by Christians, as Romans 6-7 demonstrates. Of course, Christians also receive a new nature (Colossians 2:11-15; 3:3-4, 9-10), but that does not mean that they have to stop their struggle against their sinful nature (see Colossians 3:5-8, 12-15). In fact, as the discourse of Colossians 2-3 and Romans 6-8 teaches us, we must acknowledge that a real change occurs when a Christian is baptized, while not at the same time denying that the sinful self remains—and also the need to struggle valiantly against it.
Thus, traditional Lutherans and Calvinists teach that a human being’s actions remain tainted by selfishness, pride, rebellion, and arrogance, even after a person has come to faith in Christ. Moral perfection will take place only after we die. However, it does not follow that people are as wicked as they can be and that this is the worst of all possible worlds, morally speaking, as is often assumed by people like Grossman and other critics of the Edwardian view of original sin. It does mean, though, that there is often something selfish about even the best of our works. For example, we may help a little old lady across the street, fully expecting a merit badge or at least the acclaim of our fellow citizens (no matter how humbly we may protest).
But even as we Lutherans (and our Calvinist friends) take a rather grim view of human nature, we are also unique among Christians in separating civil righteousness from true godliness, and this is a positive advance in theology and political science. While we grant that God is offended by the pride and selfishness that often lie behind our most altruistic deeds, we recognize that other human beings rightly are not. It matters little to a community whether a neighbor is helping the little old lady across the street out of love for God or out of a desire for praise. Regardless of their motives, we want people to behave in a decent manner. Thus, we can appeal to people’s selfish instincts to avoid the pain of punishment or to garner other people’s praise and rewards, and thus we use their innate sin as a means to bring about civil concord. Thus, the fact that people are thoroughly tainted by original sin does not prevent them from doing civil righteousness at a fairly sophisticated level. What it does do is prevent them from being righteous in God’s eyes by their own efforts. That kind of godliness requires God’s grace and forgiveness.
The doctrine of original sin in our theology serves to underscore the role of God’s grace. Not only does He save those who have rejected Him all along, He also saves those who have been following Him for years, for they need His help no less than the “worst” of sinners. And so this doctrine, like most articles of faith, is formulated to help the faithful understand their relationship to God. But this article of faith could also have a beneficial influence on society if people would take it seriously, regardless of whether or not they accept the rest of our theology.
First, we would not be so quick to demonize opponents. The same original sin that exists in them exists in each of us. This is not to trivialize the distinction between right and wrong or to say that one cannot take a moral stance on a given issue. It does, however, remind us that even if we happen to be right on a moral or political issue debated by our peers, we are not thereby necessarily right with God.
At the same time, those in leadership would be better equipped to avoid falling into temptation. History is littered with leaders who thought that an ordination or election to high office or embracing a noble cause would be enough to suppress all their inner demons. As in rock climbing, those who think themselves invincible are the ones most likely to fall.
We would also avoid utopian dreaming, which invariably ends in nightmares. Because for much of American history liberals have tended to be optimistic about human nature and the possibility of constructing a perfect society while conservatives have been skeptical of such things, Grossman nearly equates belief in original sin with a conservative political view. Indeed, one can see that much of the traditional conservative agenda—the separation of powers, a preference for the local over the national, and a reluctance to change the evils we know for evils we don’t—reflects a rather negative view of human nature. But conservatives have shown themselves to be just as naïve at times in their utopianism, as if a completely unregulated market or the abolition of all taxes would solve all our problems. (Can anyone say, "Ayn Rand"?) Both conservatives and liberals would do well to stop speaking in millennialist terms.
Instead, we should adopt a more realistic agenda. We will confess that we cannot ignore today’s evils, for that would be wicked, and yet we will also recognize that today’s evils are often the unintended consequences of solutions to yesterday’s evils, and the good and necessary reforms of today will become the basis for tomorrow’s evils. Given the fixity of human nature, we will realize that we cannot banish greed, lust, sloth, arrogance, and the other evils that plague the human condition. At most, we can stop one or more expressions of those vices or keep them in check. However, we may also be able to use one vice to offset another. For example, we may encourage people to engage in the vice of pride as we urge them to make generous charitable contributions. We encourage one of their vices, their pride, in order to offset the effects of another vice, their greed. We haven’t rid them of original sin or its resultant vices, but we have encouraged them to behave in a manner more befitting society. And thus we can foster positive change in society, if only we don’t delude ourselves into thinking that civil righteousness is the kingdom of God and the absence of original sin.
© 2011 James A. Kellerman
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Two Major Belief Systems
If you were to ask most people, they would say that there are two different ways of looking at the world, one based on faith and the other based on reason and evidence. Some would say that an individual could embrace both of these systems, using faith to understand the world in religious contexts, but using reason and evidence in scientific contexts. Others would privilege one system or the other, either saying that faith has to take precedence over anything that reason might have to say or vice versa. What is interesting to observe is that Christians and non-Christians, atheists and agnostics and people of all persuasions seem to agree with this assessment. Faith (including the Christian faith) deals with a realm where human reason cannot enter the picture. Meanwhile, the Enlightenment worldview (primarily found in the sciences but not solely there) prides itself as founded on reason alone and eschews anything that might smack of faith.
And yet this is a completely inaccurate assessment. It is true that in the West there are two primary intellectual systems: that of Christianity and that of the Enlightenment. (By the Enlightenment I mean not merely the Aufklärung of the eighteenth century but the various intellectual currents that flow from it; postmodernism, for example, is not a return to a pre-modern worldview but is a continuation as well as a modification and a rejection of the modernism derived from the Aufklärung and is unthinkable without it.) Although they are not the only intellectual systems present in our country and both contain a wide variety of thought not always in perfect harmony, they do represent two rather distinct ways of looking at the universe. But people err when they assume that only one is based on faith and only the other uses reason and evidence.
In truth, both Christianity and the Enlightenment proceed from premises that must be accepted by faith, even as they both believe that there are strong arguments for accepting their own premises. Christianity teaches the existence of God and His intervention in history. It has throughout the centuries made rational arguments as to why this is so, but it has also understood that ultimately one either accepts the premise or one doesn’t. Similarly, the Enlightenment proceeds from the notion that the material universe is all that is knowable and therefore is all that exists. Moreover, it believes that anything we want to learn about this material universe can be learned by empirical observation. And while this may seem a reasonable observation, it is one that cannot be proven empirically. One has to assume by faith that we do not live in a solipsistic world or in a universe where the senses deceive us or where nature is not always consistent. Now we may argue over the axioms upon which we rely, but ultimately they either are accepted by faith or are not.
Those premises, once accepted, determine the way that the system of thought will develop. The Enlightenment, founded on a belief in materialism and empiricism, will then use the evidence found by empirical observation exclusively to determine what will be part of its teaching and what will not. But Christianity too proceeds in an analogous manner. The Christian faith starts with the belief that God exists, that mankind in its current state is tainted by original sin, that God intervened in human history through the death and resurrection of Christ, and that the Scriptures record this revelation. A Christian theologian worthy of the title will try to conserve the data of Scripture, much as an Enlightenment thinker will try to craft an interpretation that best explains all the empirical data. Most of us are familiar with the process used by scientists, but fail to recognize that Christian theologians follow a similar process. They are not crafting ideas out of whole cloth, but are logically following the methodology drawn from their premises and are trying to preserve all of their data. The difference is that their methodology sends them to the Scriptures as the most reliable source of information, while those of the Enlightenment would look at the empirical data of the latest experiment. The Enlightenment might criticize Christians for failing to restrict themselves to material observation, but Christians would argue in reply that the Enlightenment is irrational by limiting itself to only the material realm.
There is much more to say about these two major intellectual systems, but suffice it to say that the Enlightenment view is no less based on faith than Christianity is and that Christianity is no less methodical and rational in the way that it teaches the faith.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
And yet this is a completely inaccurate assessment. It is true that in the West there are two primary intellectual systems: that of Christianity and that of the Enlightenment. (By the Enlightenment I mean not merely the Aufklärung of the eighteenth century but the various intellectual currents that flow from it; postmodernism, for example, is not a return to a pre-modern worldview but is a continuation as well as a modification and a rejection of the modernism derived from the Aufklärung and is unthinkable without it.) Although they are not the only intellectual systems present in our country and both contain a wide variety of thought not always in perfect harmony, they do represent two rather distinct ways of looking at the universe. But people err when they assume that only one is based on faith and only the other uses reason and evidence.
In truth, both Christianity and the Enlightenment proceed from premises that must be accepted by faith, even as they both believe that there are strong arguments for accepting their own premises. Christianity teaches the existence of God and His intervention in history. It has throughout the centuries made rational arguments as to why this is so, but it has also understood that ultimately one either accepts the premise or one doesn’t. Similarly, the Enlightenment proceeds from the notion that the material universe is all that is knowable and therefore is all that exists. Moreover, it believes that anything we want to learn about this material universe can be learned by empirical observation. And while this may seem a reasonable observation, it is one that cannot be proven empirically. One has to assume by faith that we do not live in a solipsistic world or in a universe where the senses deceive us or where nature is not always consistent. Now we may argue over the axioms upon which we rely, but ultimately they either are accepted by faith or are not.
Those premises, once accepted, determine the way that the system of thought will develop. The Enlightenment, founded on a belief in materialism and empiricism, will then use the evidence found by empirical observation exclusively to determine what will be part of its teaching and what will not. But Christianity too proceeds in an analogous manner. The Christian faith starts with the belief that God exists, that mankind in its current state is tainted by original sin, that God intervened in human history through the death and resurrection of Christ, and that the Scriptures record this revelation. A Christian theologian worthy of the title will try to conserve the data of Scripture, much as an Enlightenment thinker will try to craft an interpretation that best explains all the empirical data. Most of us are familiar with the process used by scientists, but fail to recognize that Christian theologians follow a similar process. They are not crafting ideas out of whole cloth, but are logically following the methodology drawn from their premises and are trying to preserve all of their data. The difference is that their methodology sends them to the Scriptures as the most reliable source of information, while those of the Enlightenment would look at the empirical data of the latest experiment. The Enlightenment might criticize Christians for failing to restrict themselves to material observation, but Christians would argue in reply that the Enlightenment is irrational by limiting itself to only the material realm.
There is much more to say about these two major intellectual systems, but suffice it to say that the Enlightenment view is no less based on faith than Christianity is and that Christianity is no less methodical and rational in the way that it teaches the faith.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Friday, August 27, 2010
Discerning the Will of God
In July a parishioner emailed me a series of questions about discerning the will of God. I emailed him back and he thought the answers were helpful. With my permission he shared the answers with his friends and urged me to give the answers a broader distribution. Since I haven’t blogged for a while, I thought this might make a good topic for a blog, especially since we all face moments in life when we have to make major choices. With his permission I am posting most of my reply to him, with a little editing to make it more applicable to a general audience.
Often when making a decision, we want to know that God is approving of it. Hence we want to know exactly what God has to say about it. But how can we discern God’s voice from the clamor all around us? We begin then by asking the question: Is it normal to “feel” God? If so, can you describe the feeling? One temptation that many Christians face is to equate God (or an encounter with Him) with a particular feeling. But God isn’t a feeling—any more than human beings are. There is no one consistent feeling that you have whenever you talk with your mom or dad or any other person. Of course, there is often a feeling of love when I talk with loved ones or with God, and that is to be expected. But that is not always the feeling, since there are sometimes other emotions that are more appropriate—guilt, anger, confusion, and the like. If you read the Psalms, you see the wide variety of emotions that people have when they dealt with God. Moreover, we have to understand that God does not always manifest Himself and certainly not in the fullness of His glory; even Moses wasn’t allowed to see God’s face. In addition, it often seems that the more one advances spiritually, the less one senses God, as is often expressed by the psalmists, who complain that God has abandoned them when they had been faithful to Him. Theologians have noted that God appeared to Moses as a bright light in a burning bush in his first encounter, but in later encounters he went under a dark cloud; so at first believers seem to sense God’s presence easily, but He seems more withdrawn as we progress. Of course, God seems more absent (not that He is) so that we can learn to trust His Word rather than our feelings or outward manifestations.
How do we, as Christians (faithful or trying to be) listen to God to try and understand His plan? Read the Scriptures. God has already given you a whole book revealing Himself and His attitudes. Somehow or another, though, we think that that isn’t enough. We want Him to say more. But He has already given an outline of the moral law in the Ten Commandments and further explained them in the Sermon on the Mount. He has revealed the gospel by which we have new life. The gospel is God’s eternal Word to us; it is the only means by which we have eternal life. Why would we seek something beyond it? Of course, God hasn’t spoken about every detail in our life because He does allow us great freedom. Let me illustrate with this example. Let’s say that you have a vehicle and the money to keep it gassed up. You are told that you can drive on any paved road as long as you obey the traffic signs. Within those parameters, however, you can drive wherever you want to. In the same way you have the gospel, which like a car empowers you to go wherever you want to. The only restrictions are laid down by the law, which tells you where you may not go and what restrictions you have to observe. But just as I could choose to drive to the Smokies or to the Rockies or stay in the Midwest, so I have the freedom to do all sorts of things as long as I do not violate God’s law as summarized in the commandments. Now I may have to use my common sense to ask myself whether I should go to the mountains or stay in the Midwest; likewise, in the Christian life I may have to use my common sense to ask what the best choice in life is. But God’s plan isn’t a straightjacket.
When we make decisions, should we do so honoring our parents (and what they taught us) as well as God? We must always honor our parents, but honor does not necessarily mean obedience. When we are not yet of age, it does, but once we are grown and not under their direct authority, we may listen to their advice but we are not bound to it.
When looking to the Scriptures for guidance, do we simply go with the way we were taught or is it better to come up with our own interpretation? The Scriptures are never a matter of our own interpretation, as Peter reminds us (2 Peter 1:20-21). Nor do the Scriptures tell us to simply be a Christian by association and without real thought. We are to search the Scriptures and learn them and know them. Since the Scriptures interpret the Scriptures and become clearer the more we read them, the main task for a Christian is to steep himself or herself in the Bible so that it really does become clear.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Often when making a decision, we want to know that God is approving of it. Hence we want to know exactly what God has to say about it. But how can we discern God’s voice from the clamor all around us? We begin then by asking the question: Is it normal to “feel” God? If so, can you describe the feeling? One temptation that many Christians face is to equate God (or an encounter with Him) with a particular feeling. But God isn’t a feeling—any more than human beings are. There is no one consistent feeling that you have whenever you talk with your mom or dad or any other person. Of course, there is often a feeling of love when I talk with loved ones or with God, and that is to be expected. But that is not always the feeling, since there are sometimes other emotions that are more appropriate—guilt, anger, confusion, and the like. If you read the Psalms, you see the wide variety of emotions that people have when they dealt with God. Moreover, we have to understand that God does not always manifest Himself and certainly not in the fullness of His glory; even Moses wasn’t allowed to see God’s face. In addition, it often seems that the more one advances spiritually, the less one senses God, as is often expressed by the psalmists, who complain that God has abandoned them when they had been faithful to Him. Theologians have noted that God appeared to Moses as a bright light in a burning bush in his first encounter, but in later encounters he went under a dark cloud; so at first believers seem to sense God’s presence easily, but He seems more withdrawn as we progress. Of course, God seems more absent (not that He is) so that we can learn to trust His Word rather than our feelings or outward manifestations.
How do we, as Christians (faithful or trying to be) listen to God to try and understand His plan? Read the Scriptures. God has already given you a whole book revealing Himself and His attitudes. Somehow or another, though, we think that that isn’t enough. We want Him to say more. But He has already given an outline of the moral law in the Ten Commandments and further explained them in the Sermon on the Mount. He has revealed the gospel by which we have new life. The gospel is God’s eternal Word to us; it is the only means by which we have eternal life. Why would we seek something beyond it? Of course, God hasn’t spoken about every detail in our life because He does allow us great freedom. Let me illustrate with this example. Let’s say that you have a vehicle and the money to keep it gassed up. You are told that you can drive on any paved road as long as you obey the traffic signs. Within those parameters, however, you can drive wherever you want to. In the same way you have the gospel, which like a car empowers you to go wherever you want to. The only restrictions are laid down by the law, which tells you where you may not go and what restrictions you have to observe. But just as I could choose to drive to the Smokies or to the Rockies or stay in the Midwest, so I have the freedom to do all sorts of things as long as I do not violate God’s law as summarized in the commandments. Now I may have to use my common sense to ask myself whether I should go to the mountains or stay in the Midwest; likewise, in the Christian life I may have to use my common sense to ask what the best choice in life is. But God’s plan isn’t a straightjacket.
When we make decisions, should we do so honoring our parents (and what they taught us) as well as God? We must always honor our parents, but honor does not necessarily mean obedience. When we are not yet of age, it does, but once we are grown and not under their direct authority, we may listen to their advice but we are not bound to it.
When looking to the Scriptures for guidance, do we simply go with the way we were taught or is it better to come up with our own interpretation? The Scriptures are never a matter of our own interpretation, as Peter reminds us (2 Peter 1:20-21). Nor do the Scriptures tell us to simply be a Christian by association and without real thought. We are to search the Scriptures and learn them and know them. Since the Scriptures interpret the Scriptures and become clearer the more we read them, the main task for a Christian is to steep himself or herself in the Bible so that it really does become clear.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
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