Seeing as the Lutheran Carnival is being hosted by the folks at "Here I Stand" I understood that it was going to be from the conservative Lutheran perspective. Even so, I think I'm pretty Lutheran, so I was briefly entertaining the idea of submitting something for the carnival. Then I read their requirements for entries.
Basically, you have to make a quia subscription to the Book of Concord. What does that mean? You have to believe that the Book of Concord is a right and proper exposition of the Word of God. In essence, you can't believe the Book of Concord was a neat historical leap, but we're beyond that now.Oh darn! I'm not Lutheran enough after all!
I remembering once hearing that you can always spot a cult because they have a Bible in one hand and another bible in the other hand. I had never really thought this applied to Lutheranism, but....
Now I'm a big fan of the Book of Concord. I tend to think it's a very reliable guide to Lutheranism. But if it can be shown, for instance, that Martin Luther misinterpreted Paul (and I think it can be), then I think we pretty much have to go with Paul. I think true Lutheranism requires it.
But if the history of the Book of Concord shows us anything, it's that nothing is quite so authentically 16th century Lutheran as disputes over who's really a Lutheran and who's not.
1 comment:
This is of course the standard issue that separates the LCMS from the ELCA. They don't like the way we read the Bible and they don't like the way we read the Confessions, largely because we read both in the same way.
Now I will surely admit that there are those within the broad ELCA umbrella who treat both Confessions and Scripture as "advisory" texts that we can use as input but disregard when we choose. I'm not arguing in support of that and would, in fact, gladly argue against it. But I am explicitly rejecting both a modern inerrantist reading of the Bible and a corresponding reading of the Lutheran symbols as perfect renderings of the faith.
I'm not sure I can even name anything in the Book of Concord that I disagree with. But I suspect that if I were to discourse on it, there would be times when my bretheren in the LCMS would exclaim "Aha!"
I alluded to Luther misreading Paul, and N.T. Wright is among those I would bring in as a witness. What I'm referring to, of course, is a strictly imputational interpretation of justification. Now it may be that this isn't really present in Luther's thought. The recent Finnish work has some quite promising ideas in that regard. But the imputational idea is quite clearly carried over into later Lutheranism by way of the Lutheran confessions. The Finnish interpretation, for example, is specifically ruled out in the Formula of Concord in the course of its denunciation of Ossiander.
Now if I could pick up the FC and explain that what it really intended to rule out was only Ossiander's hypothesis, then I might yet be able to make room for the Finnish interpretation, but I suspect that many strongly confessional Lutherans would say that I was playing fast and loose.
I was, of course, employing hyperbole in suggesting that the BoC is sometimes treated as a second Bible, but if one is to say that we must teach strict imputational justification because the BoC says so, then it is certainly drifting in that direction.
Frankly, I would argue that strict adherence to imputational justification is a long step in the direction of a Lutheran scholasticism and is contrary to the spirit of Lutheranism. And this is where I see the distinction between ELCA Lutheranism and LCMS (and more conservative) Lutheranism. Is Lutheranism a way of viewing Christianity (ELCA in its finer moments) or is it adherence to a set of doctrines (LCMS in its lesser moments)?
Post a Comment