Lately, I haven't been feeling all that Lutheran. I more or less believe just about everything in the Confessions, but I don't entirely buy into the Lutheran ethos. Just a few things:
1. I don't believe that all of life or all of Scripture falls into some kind of terror/comfort dialectic of feeling guilty, then feeling absolved. I've said this before, and I know people have their strong disagreements with that, but I'm just totally not there. I'm not Martin Luther. I don't have his disposition or conscience. I do not continually feel God breathing down my neck with the fire of judgement for failing to have been good enough to earn his favor. I don't see it everywhere in Scripture, either. I see it some places, mostly the Psalms and Prophets, and I do acknowledge that's a part of human existence, but the Lutheran tendency is to boil all of reality down to this one thing. I don't ever see Paul trying to scare people with the Law. I don't see Jesus do it much, either.
2. I don't look at every time God or Jesus tells someone to do something through this lens of "You must do this absolutely perfectly from the bottom of your soul if you want to earn your salvation." When Lutherans mention that Jesus said to do this or that, they tend immediately add, "But you can't do this perfectly! There's only one person who didn't commit adultery perfectly, and that's Jesus. His righteousness is imputed to YOU!" No one in the Bible ever speaks that way. Paul seems quite comfortable with telling the Corinthians to love each other without reminding them over and over that they can never love each other well enough to earn their salvation.
3. I'm not saying I don't believe in inerrancy. I'm saying that it's ceased to be relevant to me in the last year or so. I don't really care what people mean by inerrancy anymore or whether any of the texts meet that standard. It doesn't seem to affect me much one way or the other. I read the Bible assuming that the people who wrote it basically knew what they were talking about, and that seems to be enough for me. I really, really couldn't give a crap about verbal & plenary inspiration. I don't really care about having any particular theory of inspiration. In a lot of people's eyes, that means I have no logically consistent way to reject Bultmann. My answer is I don't really care. I mean it. I just plain don't care. I somehow am getting a lot out of the New Testament these days without thinking about whether or not the Holy Spirit inspired each individual word of the 4th Edition.
4. I don't buy into "full agreement in all points of doctrine" fellowship because it's never been the reality of the Church, ever. Ever. Including the early days of the LCMS.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Sometimes, I'm Not So Lutheran
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
17 comments:
Amen, amen.
Two of these are pitfalls in my flavor of Christianity, and I'm with you completely. As Rob said, amen!
Great thoughts, Josh. I feel very similar. When people ask me what kind of Lutheran I am, I always respond with "a reluctant one".
Anyway, good thoughts.
Once I discovered that LCMS Lutherans are the second most likely to hold to literal six day creationism and flood geology-- the first likely sect being Seventh Day Adventists-- I suddenly became not so Lutheran anymore myself. At least LCMS Lutheran.
Josh,
What you mean is, "Sometimes I'm not such a Lutheran seminarian/theologian/blogger." Look around you at the fellow Lutherans in the pews and Sunday Schools at the church you attend. Apart from maybe no. 2, I've noticed that none of the non-blogging lay Lutherans I've met ever think in these ways either.
AMEN a hundred times!!!
I don't look at every time God or Jesus tells someone to do something through this lens of "You must do this absolutely perfectly from the bottom of your soul if you want to earn your salvation." When Lutherans mention that Jesus said to do this or that, they tend immediately add, "But you can't do this perfectly! There's only one person who didn't commit adultery perfectly, and that's Jesus. His righteousness is imputed to YOU!"
I think this is more of an American Waltherian Lutheran take on Scripture.
Although most Waltherian thought is generally ok with me, it can be so so narrow that I have become a bit skeptical.
Thank God not all Lutherans are LCMS. ;-)
LPC
As others have pointed out, I think this is an LCMS issue in many ways. I don't think the caricature you paint is anything like so prevalent in the ELCE, for example.
I know I'm oversimplifying here, but the impression I often get of the LCMS is that it looks like what you get if you cross confessional Lutheranism with 1920s/30s American fundamentalism, especially as regards creationism and inerrancy.
The one occasion where I can think of Jesus actively trying to scare someone with the Law, it didn't seem to work (Rich Young Ruler), and he scared the disciples instead. I think you over there would say, Go figure.
Does #4 mean you might want to play with us PCA Presbyterians too? Looking forward to possible ordination in the PCA, I hope that I could seek out a LCMS pastor in whatever town I end up in for common cause. At least the Lutheran could have a beer with me, toast Luther and talk smack about those silly credobaptists...
I hang out with Calvinists all the time. Fellowship, though? I guess I still see the BoC as the basis of fellowship. When I say "all points of doctrine," well, there are lots of other doctrines you can invent on top of what's in the BoC.
The whole BoC or Augsburg? I'd be happy to use the Augsburg as the basis of fellowship, as Calvin himself did. My great grief in the History of the Church was the split between the Lutherans and the Reformed. I tend to think like Machen and call the Lutheran Church, especially the LCMS, our sister church. I appreciate the education I recieved in a LCMS grade school. Hey, if the German Reformed and Lutherans could have fellowship, why not us?
There never was a split because there was never any unity to begin with. Both McGrath and Sasse detail this rather well. The Zurich and Wittenberg movements were at completely opposite ends of the theological spectrum on most issues, not just the Lord's Supper. And as others have pointed out, Calvinists have never had any problem with being in fellowship with Zwinglians. The fruit of this is that the Reformed world is home to both strains sympathetic to certain concerns of Lutheranism and strains completely antithetical to everything the Lutheran Reformation was about.
The reason I say the BoC is that when the Reformed applaud the Augsburg Confession abstracted from the catechisms and apology (the FC is arguably not entirely necessary), they do so because they can find ways to give new meanings to the individual words so as to claim that they hold the AC while believing the exact opposite of what it confesses.
I don't mean to take a dump all over your enthusiasm, but extreme latidudinarianism toward confessions--which includes a policy of open fellowship toward communions that reject it--eviscerates them of meaning. You might as well not even have them if you're just going to sign onto them as political symbols rather than rules of faith. Besides, you can't believe in TULIP and subscribe to the AC. The L is rejected in III, and P is rejected in article XII. Nor can you be a "Reformed Baptist," or even a Zwinglian.
extreme latitudinarianism toward confessions ... eviscerates them of meaning.
Well said, Josh. It is not enough for fellowship to say the words that we say; one has to mean what we mean by them.
That is why I differ with you and say that the Formula is necessary, because it clarifies and disambiguates the Augustana and the rest of the BC in important ways. A Reformed might sign on to the Augustana (understanding it in a completely different way than we do), but he could not sign on to the understanding of the Augustana that is elaborated in the FC.
Your last couple of comments really make a hash of your initial claim that you don't believe in the necessity of agreement in "all points of doctrine." Not so much because you've admitted that you still see the BC as the basis of fellowship (that's really just quibbling over how far the phrase "all points" extends), but because you have raised the standard of "not only confess what we confess, but mean what we mean by it." That is a standard of "full agreement," in which the word "full" characterizes the depth of the agreement as much as it does the extent of doctrines agreed upon.
And this food is called among us Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.
Granted the Reformed and Lutheran strains were not united, but there was a move in that direction by Melanchton and Calvin. Both sides were too busy being persecuted by the Catholics to make it work, but it is hard to say it would have been a bad thing if they could have presented a united front. Calvin insisted Zwingli's sacramentalism was insufficent and you cannot in good conscience sign the Westminster which describes the sacraments as efficatious and be Zwinglian. To say we compromised is a little unfair, for pete's sake, we drowned Anabaptists!
Do you say that L is rejected in III due to the word "might," making the Atonement possible, but not actual?
Jared, Melanchthon's personal rapprochement with Calvin (and Erasmus, don't forget) very nearly destroyed what unity the Lutherans had. The work of Chemnitz and Andrae held the shaky coalition together after the damage done to it by Melanchthon, Osiander, Flacius, and Agricola.
I agree that it would have not been a bad thing if the Swiss and the Saxons could have had a united front. What I don't think you realize is that the only way for this unity to happen was for the Swiss to repudiate Zwingli's doctrines. Calvin's signing of the Consensus Tigurinus shows just how far he was willing to compromise with Bullinger. The ensuing history of the Reformed movement bears that out. You know, like how Zwinglians interpret "efficacious" in the same latitudinarian way that you wish Lutherans would let you interpret "truly present" and "for all the actual sins of men" (what I was alluding to in AC III).
found your blog through IM. My family and I just moved to Milwaukee this summer to start teaching at a WELS based school. Wow! My wife and I both grew up in evangelical free/Bible churches. We went through a Bible study with a WELS pastor but cannot join the church mostly because of the fellowship issue. Even my most ardent Presbyterian friends in Bible college never played the fellowship card like the WELS. Needless to say, I appreciate your thoughts.
Post a Comment