I'm Not Really a Lutheran

I was at a celebration banquet my congregation was holding a month or so ago and as I listened to the long-time members talk about the life stories and how they intertwined with the church I came to the realization, I'm not really a Lutheran.

Don't get me wrong. I think like a Lutheran. I love the Lutheran hymns and liturgies. I was baptized as a Lutheran. I was married in the same Lutheran church where my parents and grandparents had been married and where I had grown up and been taught how to be a Christian.

But I'm not Norwegian or Swedish or German or a descendent of any of the other traditional Lutheran ethnic groups. I joke that I come from a long line of Irish Lutherans. My English/Irish grandfather somehow made his way into a Lutheran church (he was at least Pennsylvanian, so I've got that going for me), and that's how I came into Lutheranism. But as I sat at the banquet and listened to the Norwegians talk about their Norwegian culture, I realized, I'm not really one of these people.

Again, I love Lutherans. I'm endlessly thankful that they let me hang around with them. I've even taken to making an odd joke about lutefisk now and then, though I've never eaten the stuff and don't intend to. Still, I can't help feeling like I'm a wolf that was raised by sheep.

I was born on Reformation Day, so I've got that going for me too, but -- are you ready for this? -- my middle name is Wesley. It's a family name. The side of my family that weren't Irish Lutherans were Methodists -- at least until my great-grandmother lost her bid for control of the congregation to another woman, so my grandfather tells me.

Now I'm not planning to become Methodist any time soon -- I'm quite happy as a resident alien among the Lutherans -- but I've recently come to the realization that I'm almost completely ignorant of the life and theology of John Wesley. So I picked up Kenneth Collins' John Wesley: A Theological Journey and an anthology of Wesley's writings. I started Collins' book last night. So far, I've learned that I also know next to nothing about the history of the Church of England after the 16th century.

How Lutheran Are You?

I came across this in a post by Brobrooz on Beliefnet. I expect it will spread quickly.

You are 93% Lutheran! This is most certainly true.

Nicely done! Martin would be proud of you! You may or may not have room for growth in understanding Lutheran terminology and culture. Good thing Salvation is by Grace and not by merit. We can add nothing to what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. But it never hurts to learn a little more about the church on earth. Thanks for taking the quiz!

How Lutheran Are You?
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I was born on Reformation Day, I have a press-on of Luther's rose on my car's rear windshield, and the ringtone on my phone is "Patrem Omnipotentem" from Bach's Mass in B Minor, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to see that I rated very, very Lutheran.

The Evangelizing Church

Picture a time when although most people are nominally Christian, the large majority of them have a confused idea of the basic message of Christianity. The Bible isn't much read and the preaching in churches is often about anything but the Gospel. Despair and hopelessness are widespread. Many people think they can secure their hapiness by buying things.

It's present-day America, right? Or is it sixteenth century Europe?

This juxtaposition of the problems of the Reformation era and the problems of modern America is from the second chapter of The Evangelizing Church: A Lutheran Contribution. The authors (primarily Kelly Fryer for this chapter) offer a fresh look at the power of Lutheranism. What if rather than seeing the Reformation as a correction of bad doctrine, we see it instead as a revival movement where the Gospel was spoken with power and the Church was renewed not by a return to better theology but by the impulse to spread the Gospel? Does that look anything like the Lutheran churches we know?

I've aired my reservations about evangelism here before. And yet it's a problem that just won't go away. As much as I'd like to, I can't get around the Great Commission.

The authors of The Evangelizing Church identify three typical Lutheran stances toward evangelism:

1) Skepitcal

In this stance, the whole enterprise of evangelism is viewed with suspicion. In as much as evangelism is proselytizing, it is seen as a bad thing. In as much as it is a holdover from colonialism, it is seen as something for which the Church needs to repent. And in as much as we live in a pluralistic society, evangelism shows disrespect for those of other religions. All of this lets us sidestep the call to evangelize.

2) Pragmatic

Fully embracing the call to evangelize, the pragmatic approach looks around at other denominations and borrows whatever they are doing. And so we have Lutherans embracing the Four Spiritual Laws and Evangelism Explosion and the Purpose Driven Life and whatever else is popular in the wider church culture without worrying about the question of whether these methods are faithful to our Lutheran traditions.

3) Romantic

This stance views everything the Church does as evangelism. It loves the slogan, "Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary." But in general it never feels words are necessary. And so we feed the poor and clothe the naked, but we never actually verbally express the Gospel to anyone.


Seeing these position before me, I was able to easily identify myself as an adherent of the first position. When pressed with the necessity of evangelizing, I might be willing to fall back on the third position, but I hate the second position with the fury of a thousand suns. But, of course, I do see that all three positions are tragically flawed.

The authors of The Evangelizing Church promise a way forward. And so I'm reading on with great hope. I'll let you know what I find.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Lutheranism

I was reading the Lutheran Handbook's hagiography of Hypatia of Alexadria today (p. 62) and the subsequent demonization of Pelagius, when I was struck by a parallel between the Lutheran Handbook and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the guide itself as described in the book, not the book). Check it out:

"In many of the more relaxed congregations of the Western Church, the Lutheran Handbook has supplanted the great Catechism of the Catholic Church as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many ommisions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least widly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper, and secondly it has the words HERE WE STAND inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."

(Note: Those who haven't read Douglas Adams' book may not get this.)

Ramblings on Free Will

Martin Luther is said to have looked back at his body of work late in his life and decided that his Bondage of the Will was one of the few things (along with the catechisms) he wrote that was worth preserving. Calvinists like to point this out. Lutherans have to live with it.

It's true that lack of free will is a cornerstone of Lutheran theology. How many times is Luther's explanation of the third article of the Creed quoted? "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him..." This is a cornerstone of our theology. It's also a bit of an embarassment.

When I was in college a friend and I used to get together in various bars and talk about philosophy. It became a joke between us that no matter what topic we talked about it always came down to the question of free will. At the time, I was an unapologetic defender of free will -- completely free will to the point of making every human decision practically arbitrary. My friend, a dyed-in-the-wool post-modernist, found my position absurd (which of course it was).

Later I became a dogmatic Lutheran (really...I was). I took it as a given in theological matters that the human will is absolutely bound in matters related to salvation. This is where I now think it's a bit weird. The official Lutheran position has always been that our wills are free with regard to "things below" but that they are bound with regard to "things above" -- that I can make whatever choices I like with regard to civil righteousness, but that I cannot, apart from the Holy Spirit, come to God.

American culture will not tolerate any impingement on free will. We are, says the culture, masters of our destiny. And in the realm of religion this translates into theologies that Lutherans cannot tolerate because they are synergistic and semi-Pelagian. And most of these theologies are, in fact, objectively bad -- but not necessarily because they are synergistic.

Apart from being at odds with American cultural religion because of its position on free will, Lutheran theology is also at odds with the ancient faiths of Catholicism and Orthodoxy on these matters. Orthodoxy especially stresses cooperation with God in salvation. But Lutherans hear "cooperation with God," label it as "synergistic" and treat it as heresy.

I think this is a weakness in Lutheran culture.

I was leading a study of the Augsburg Confession once and one of the participants mentioned an idea he had heard once that the Sacrament of Communion is for Lutherans something like what altar calls are for Baptists. I liked that. A retired pastor who was in the class said that Luther wouldn't have liked that. "Why not?" I asked. He responded, "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him...."

But that elipsis has content, right? It says, "but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith." We confess that we don't have the freedom to come to God on our own power, but when would we ever have to do it by our own power?

Typical Lutheran presentations make the believer (or believer-to-be) into a marionette. God pulls the strings, and we dance. We take the saying, "Apart from me you can do nothing" and make it into "You can do nothing."

The Orthodox believe that they have found the middle way between Augustine and Pelagius. Pointing to the writings of St. John Cassian, for example, the Orthodox teach that God works in and through our will to accomplish our salvation. This was judged in the West to be semi-Pelagianism.

But it's only semi-Pelagianism if you make a sharp division between the human will and the work of God and set them against one another. It seems to me that this involves a false view of the nature of God's presence in the world. If the work of God is seen as super-natural in the modernist sense of some outside action acting on nature, then you have this problem. But if you see God's work as the manifestation of God's immanent presence within the world ("in me deeper than I am in myself" as Augustine says), then the problem goes away.

It's common to here Arminians say something to the effect that God is a perfect gentleman and would never impose salvation on us against our will. That idea has always struck me as deeply flawed -- God is God and so on. But the real issue is that God doesn't need to do anything against our will, because our will is capable of being a vehicle for God's presence in our lives. And I think this is the essence of the Orthodox doctrine of synergism.

Christ, Our Righteousness

I said in a previous post, "the key insight of the Reformation was that Christ is our righteousness." Some interesting discussion followed along the lines of just how far the word "our" could be stretched here.

In the new Finnish interpretation of Luther, this idea that Christ is our righteousness is pushed to its uttermost limits. In saying that Christ is present in faith itself, the Finns are claiming that our standing with God is a result of the presence of Christ in and with (and under?) the believer. The believer is treated as righteous by God because the believer, finally, is Christ.

This is taken to have some connection to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis. Athanasius said, "God became man so that man might become God." Luther said (in his lectures on Galatians), "Faith makes a man God."

One of the big difficulties with the Finnish position is that it requires us to believe that while Luther held these pseudo-Orthodox beliefs, they immediately disappeared with nary a trace in susequent Lutheranism. But there is one trace. Tuomo Mannermaa in Christ Present in Faith points to the Osiandrian Controversy.

For those without an obbsession with 16th century Lutheran dogmatics, the Osiandrian Controversy was one of the disputes meant to be settled by the Formula of Concord. Andreas Osiander disliked the idea of imputed justification. Against this idea, Osiander taught that God actually makes a Christian just through the indwelling of Christ. He was apparently opposed in this by everyone from Phillip Melancthon to Martin Chemnitz. The controversy is addressed in Article III of the Formula of Concord.

According to Mannermaa, the Formula got it wrong and thus led to the disjunction between Luther and later Lutheranism.

But Article III of the Formula of Concord provides some interesting material for reflection, particularly with regard to my claim above that "the key insight of the Reformation was that Christ is our righteousness."

In the Epitome, the FC does state clearly that "Christ alone is our Righteousness" (Article III, paragraph 1), but it is concerned with the question of what this means. This article rejects the idea that either Christ is our righteousness only according to his divine nature (the view attriubuted to Osiander) or that Christ is our righteousness only according to his human nature. The article says that Christ is our righteousness according to both natures, but then it adds "in His obedience alone." That is, it is our righteousness consists in have Christ's obedience imputed to us. At the risk of having my Lutheran membership card taken away, I'm not sure I buy this.

The Formula claims that "our righteousness before God is [this very thing], that God ... presents and imputes to us the righteousness of Christ's obedience." This has solidified into dogma in some circles. For instance, Reformed teacher Michael Horton can be heard to propound that we are saved by works, but we are saved by Christ's works not our own, Christ having fulfilled the "covenant of works" which Adam did not. This strikes me as very non-Lutheran (which is fine for Dr. Horton), but this section of the FC would seem to support it.

On the other hand, this same article of the FC-Ep says that "faith alone is the means and instrument whereby we lay hold of Christ, and thus in Christ of that righteousness which avails before God." Now this I like, and I think it has much ressonance with the Finnish idea.

The idea that we are accounted as righteous because Christ's obedience is imputed to us strikes me as theological bookkeeping. I dare say it is a theology of glory sneaking into the Lutheran confessions and becoming dogma. Against this, I much prefer the proclamation that in faith we "lay hold of Christ."

I confess to being somewhat wary of the language of Christ being present in me. There's a problem of scale here. I know that in the Sacrament we see that the finite is capable of bearing the infinite, but there would seem to be a danger here of slipping into what Mark Allan Powell calls "the image of the Microscopic Jesus" -- the idea that I may have "a very tiny Jesus inside me (sitting on that throne in my heart)." Or, much worse, the idea lends itself to the gnostic idea of a "divine spark" within each of us.

I prefer, instead, the perspective of finding myself in Christ (Col. 3:3). But I think this amounts to the same thing as the Finnish idea. And so, I would like to say (against the Formula of Concord) that our righteousness before God is this very thing, that we are found in Christ and Christ in us.

Christ and Justification

As is often the case, there is some good theological discussion going on over at Without Authority, stemming from Thomas' post of some thoughts on Eberhard Jüngel's view of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,

Most recently, in the comments on that post, D.W. has questioned the influence that Tuomo Mannermaa and the new Finnish interpretation of Luther have had on the JDDJ and whether Lutherans should be willing to accept the Finnish interpretation at all.

As I said there, I am a big fan of the JDDJ. I also happen to be quite intrigued by the Finns' proposal, not just as it relates to Luther but also as it relates to Lutheranism as a way of thought. I think it's possible that they go too far in attributing the views they do to Luther, but quite apart from whether Luther believed what they claim, the ideas themselves are quite interesting and useful.

In one of the posts on Pontifications that turned Thomas' attention to the JDDJ and the question of justification, the Pontificator quotes John Henry Newman as asking, "what is it in a man, which God seeing there, therefore calls him righteous?"

I think there's a reflex temptation in Protestantism to give "faith" as the answer to this question. This precise answer caused a lot of problems in American Lutheranism during the predestination controversy at the end of the 19th century. But historically, Lutheranism knows better. We confess that we are saved by an alien righteousness, not because of anything which is in us. We confess that "Christ is our righteouesness," which necessarily means that faith is not.

And so, in answer to Newman's question, "what is it in a man, which God seeing there, therefore calls him righteous?" I think a good Lutheran answer is, "It is Christ!" (Interestingly, Newman gives the same answer: "This is really and truly our justification, not faith, not holiness, not (much less) a mere imputation; but through God’s mercy, the very Presence of Christ.")

But the difficulty lies in the fact that I was willing to accept Newman's question at all. I might just as well have said, "There is nothing 'in a man' which God seeing there therefore calls him righteous. It is all about Christ." The very question smacks of infused righteousness, and sets off ancient Lutheran trip wires. But is this really essential? I wonder if there isn't a danger of leaning on the extra nos formulation so much that we, ironically, separate ourselves from Christ.

The categories of infused righteousness and imputed righteousness are dusty artifacts of medieval theology, and the fact that we continue to drag them around may itself be a barrier to making progress in understanding the mystery of justification.

They key insight of the Reformation was NOT that we are saved by imputed righteousness. The key insight of the Reformation was that Christ is our righteousness, and I find Mannermaa and the Finnish school to be exploring this idea in a thoroughly Lutheran way.

On Lutheranism

The Lutheran Zepher asks, "What does it mean to be a Lutheran?"

Let me first answer, "Why am I a Lutheran?"

The first and most basic answer is that I'm a Lutheran because my grandparents were Lutheran. I was baptized into Lutheranism when I was three months old. My parents didn't drag me to church often, but we had enough of an identification with one congregation that when I wanted to play in the Sunday School basketball league, I knew where to go. And so I also joined the youth group there and went to annual LCA youth retreats (anyone else go to Crossways in Baltimore in the mid 80's?).

I don't remember what they taught me when I was a youth. I went to college with (1) a personal identity as a Lutheran and (2) the conviction that it didn't really matter if I went to church or not (I've learned as a parent that children rarely get the message you intended). So I drifted away from the Church and embraced the liberal arts mantra of the foolishness of Christianity.

But something more than that stuck somewhere deep in my sub-conscious mind. Years later, when I rediscovered Christianity, I checked out a number of denominations and their theology, and the superiority of Lutheranism was clear to me. I'd like to think, based on this, that I chose Lutheranism freely, but I'm a post-modern so I can't do that. I know too well why I chose it.

Still, regardless of what has led me to be a Lutheran, I really do like it, and so I'll return to the original question, "What does it mean to be a Lutheran?"

Obviously, what I've said to this point has some relevance to that. Being a Lutheran is something that gets into your blood and stays there. It's not just like being handed a hat that you continue to wear your whole life. It shapes you. It makes you who you are. Being a Lutheran makes you a Lutheran.

And so, for me, what it means to be a Lutheran is mostly about the way you see God. While Lutheranism can be gathered up into a tidy set of doctrines, I think it's more about a sort of intuitive feel that you develop toward Christianity. I suspect that a lot of Lutherans can't (or at least don't) even articulate precisely what this means, but when you hear something said about God, you can respond "No, that's not right!" or "Yes, that's the Gospel!" I think this is why I came back to Lutheranism. It's where I recognized the Gospel.

So what is this "je ne sais quoi" of Lutheranism? I think it's about seeing Christ as one who sets us free. We can make definitions about Law and Gospel or about Justification by Faith Alone or what have you, but if we don't see that Christ is setting us free, we aren't Lutheran.

I'm a theology geek, and I'd love to add something about the Theology of the Cross and God always coming down to us and so forth. And I think those are requisite elements of Lutheran theology, but I don't think all Lutherans are theology geeks (there's a chance I'm wrong about that), and I think the essence of Lutheranism is simpler than that.

I think there's something to the German nomenclature of Lutherans calling themselves "evangelische." Lutheranism, at its heart, is nothing more than a deep-seated passion for the Gospel, the good news that Christ sets us free.

Desert Spirituality for Lutherans

In the late third and early fourth centuries Christians began flocking to the Egyptian desert in search of spiritual fulfillment. The lives of people such as St. Paul the Hermit, St. Anthony, St. Macarius and St. Pachomius very quickly became legendary, and the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers is still one of the great treasures of the Church. These desert pilgrims, spiritual athletes they are sometimes called, laid the foundation for the monastic movement within Christianity.

The story of St. Augustine's "conversion" is often told, how he was in his garden and heard the voices of children singing, "Tolle lege, tolle lege!" It is even sometimes noted that what he took up and read was Romans 13:13-14, "Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." What is less often recited outside of Augustine's Confessions is that the reason he was in the garden to begin with was that a friend had just told him the story of St. Anthony and he was anguished over his own inability to overcome the sins of the flesh.

Extreme asceticism is certainly one of the images that comes to mind when we think of the desert monastics. On the surface it would seem that this is exactly the kind of "monkery" that drove Martin Luther to the point of despair as he tried to make himself worthy of heaven.

Even so, though I am an enthusiastic Lutheran, I like to see what other branches of the faith have discovered, so last year I read a collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers. I was delighted to find it not full of misanthropic otherworldliness but rather full of genuine humility, warmth and compassion. For instance, one of my favorite sayings was this:

A certain brother had sinned, and the priest commanded him to go out from the church. But Bessarion rose up and went out with him, saying, "I too am a sinful man."

And so I took a liking to the desert tradition. Then this year as I was seeking a good devotional for the Lenten season, I came across The Desert: An Anthology for Lent.

In a previous post I described my Ash Wednesday revelation. Preparing to spend Lent with a devotional on the desert, I wanted to "find my desert" and I realized that the desert is me. This Lent, I believed, would be about standing before God as I am.

The late Gerhard O. Forde once wrote that sanctification is the art of getting used to unconditional justification. This may sound like a cop out that denies any reality to sanctification -- that is, until you actually try it. I think the great Christian tradition of desert spirituality offers a key to understanding the way in which one is sanctified by getting used to unconditional justification.

In what follows I am keanly aware of being a novice, but I can also see the brightness and potential of what I've stumbled upon. Kindly consider this a pilgrim's report from the road. The quotations are from the aforementioned anthology.

When you retreat into yourself, you should stand before the Lord, and remain in His presence, not letting the eyes of the mind turn away from the Lord. This is the true wilderness--to stand face to face with the Lord.
-Theophan the Recluse

In the life of Christian spirituality, the first thing we must learn to do is to allow ourselves to come before God. Perhaps this is the only thing we need to learn to do. But it is something we must admit to being very ambivalent about.

What I learned on Ash Wednesday is that I want to come before God properly adorned. I want some bling, something to show I belong in the presence of God. Failing that, I'd probably settle for a suitable covering, a garment of skin, or fig leaves if necessary.

But the point of entry of the desert is giving up everything you have. For the spiritual athletes of third century Egypt, that meant physical belongings -- but also much more. For each of us, it must mean at least our spiritual pretensions. To come before God in the way of the desert, we must come as we are -- as we really are, not as we wish we were.

There is a physical desert, inhabited by a few exceptional men and women who are called to live there; but more importantly, there is an inner desert, into which each one of us must one day venture. It is a void; an empty space for solitude and testing.
-Frere Ivan

Yes, testing. Are we getting into monkery here? Have we strayed from our firm Lutheran castle? No. What's being tested is how we will react to what we find when left to ourselves. When we see ourselves, will we turn toward ourselves? Will we despair? Or dare we still turn toward God?

The Sacred Space daily prayer often offers a quotation from St. Ignatius of Loyola recalling, "In those days God taught me as a teacher teaches a pupil." That hasn't been my experience this Lent. Rather I would say, "In these days, God has taught me as a parent teaches a child sent to time out."

Generally speaking, I tend to feel close to God. I have a sense of God's presence. But this Lent, as I've been "led into the desert" so to speak, I've felt that distinctly less. What I thought was going to be an experience of standing before God has become more a lesson of standing alone. But I think I understand.

Not everyone is called to face the particular trials of St. Anthony but each one of us has, sooner or later, to confront the terrible demons which we carry inside: the demons of aggression, resentment, pride, sadness, despair.
-Frere Ivan

This is my experience. As I've tried to turn away from the form and beauty available in verbal prayer in order to focus intently on sittingly quietly waiting on God, I've instead found that my own mind generated more noise as if to fill the void.

One course of action would be to seek some method to repress the noise, but this is just another spiritual pretension. So I've tried to wait for God in the midst of the noise. Recognizing that the noise, and the temptation to which it calls me, is me. This is part and parcel of standing before God as myself. This is a way of getting used to unconditional justification.

Having read the account of spiritual pilgrims who have gone before me, I am confident to say that most, if not all, who know the noise I'm referring to know that it's not an indifferent noise. It's ugliness. It's the lower parts of myself coming to the fore. And it hurts to have that exposed as I'm trying to stand before God.

But where else would it be? Where would I hide it that God would not see? The shame isn't caused by God seeing it. It's caused by me seeing it while I'm thinking of God. And, ultimately, this is goodness.

Therefore, I end with one last wonderful quote which I think captures, much better than I otherwise could, the essence of what I've learned so far about desert spirituality for Lutherans.

Before we can surrender ourselves, we must become ourselves. No one can give up what they do not possess.
-Thomas Merton

Come to the desert.

Faith and Sin

(Note: In what follows I do not mean to claim that C.F.W. Walther would have agreed with my conclusions. I am merely citing his teaching as a starting point for discussion.)

Thesis X.
In the sixth place, the Word of God is not rightly divided when the preacher describes faith in a manner as if the mere inert acceptance of truths, even while a person is living in mortal sins, renders that person righteous in the sight of God and saves him; or as if faith makes a person righteous and saves him for the reason that it produces in him love and reformation of his mode of living.
-C.F.W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel

This is a solid teaching from one of the giants of American Lutheranism. In his lectures, Dr. Walther described this as an error which Rome attributes to Lutheranism and which contributes to their continued low opinion of Luther. Such can certainly be seen in some of the canons of the Council of Trent, such as Canon XIV, "If any one says that man is truly absolved from his sins and justified, because he assuredly believes himself absolved and justified; or, that no one is truly justified but he who believes himself justified; and that, by this faith alone, absolution and justification are effected; let him be anathema."

It is equally certain that such an accusation had no grounds in orthodox Lutheranism. But whatever the situation may have been in the 16th century or in Walther's day, it is good that the Council of Trent laid down such an anathema, because such teaching has clearly grown out of the Reformation slogan of sola fide and is rampant in American protestantism today. Not enough is spoken against it.

Yet another attitude is also present today which is spoken against, and I don't dispute that some people teach this, namely that persons are not only justified by "mere inert acceptance of truths" but even more that everyone is freely justified by the bare fact of the existence of certain truths, whether they be believed or not.

This is one of the charges brought against liberal protestantism. It is claimed that the Gospel has been reduced to a sentimental idea that we ought to love all people just as they are and affirm whatever behaviors they choose to express themselves. This is certainly going on and ought to be denounced.

But the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, and he will pounce on any opening we give him. Even so our defense against the gospel of free love is exploited as a weakness.

Looking back at Walther's thesis, he speaks of a person "living in mortal sins" and in his lecture on the thesis he explains that a person who truly has faith cannot persist in willful sin. And just like that we make the transition from preachers of the Law to judges of the Law. We see a brother or sister living in a condition that we think of as mortal sin, and we conclude that such a person cannot truly have faith.

This is my chief complaint about the Calvinist doctrine of eternal security, it leads to the absurd position of claiming that backslidden Christians "never really had faith." That is, we make conclusions about another person's relationship with God that are contrary to observation because our dogma demands it (notice the idol that has entered this scene). The same thing happens in the case of judging a person "living in mortal sins." Whatever the appearances may be, such a person cannot possibly have faith in Christ, because our doctrine teaches otherwise.

We should be ashamed to hold such views.

In an earlier thesis, Walther teaches:

Thesis VIII.
In the fourth place, the Word of God is not rightly divided when the Law is preached to those who are already in terror on account of their sins or the Gospel to those who live securely in their sins.

Now this is clearly anachronistic language. I'm not sure anyone since Luther himself has truly been in terror on account of their sins. As Auden writes,

"The Just shall live by Faith," he cried in dread.
And men and women of the world were glad
Who never trembled in their useful lives.

But we recognize something in Walther's thesis which is that which we call repentance, with the Lutheran understanding that repentance is the daily turning away from our inward bent and turning toward God. So, if I may be so bold as to tinker with Dr. Walther's language, I believe that what he is saying is that the Law should not be preached to those who recognize their deep dependence upon Christ, nor the Gospel to those who do not.

Again, we are turned to an outward discernment of an inward state, which ultimately is known only to God. Naturally, we can reasonably discern such things in people we know and talk with (not "talk to"), but I think we should be quite careful in making blanket judgment against entire classes of people.

So I ask, are we prepared to offer the grace of the Gospel to those who have turned to Christ without judging them ourselves, or will we continue to beat them with the Law until they conform to our expectations?


For further reading, see this article by Martin Marty (from which I borrowed the Auden quote).

Eucharistic Sharing

As last week's events unfolded in Orlando, a challenge was frequently raised, and not so frequently answered, for someone to discuss the other decisions being made by the ELCA Churchwide Assembly. One of these other decisions that was approved will little fanfare or controversy was the Interim Eucharistic Sharing agreement with the United Methodist Church. I'd like explore that a little here.

First a couple of pieces of trivia about me:

1. I was born on Reformation Day 1969 and baptized in the Lutheran Church in America the following February. My mother was reading Robert Fischer's biography of Luther in a Sunday school class in the weeks leading up to my birth.


2. My middle name is Wesley. I am at least the fourth male child in my family line to bear this middle name, dating back at least to my great-great-great grandfather Josiah Wesley and interrupted only by a pair of Wilson's, the first of whom was born in the early '20s. My grandfather tells me we left the Methodist church because his mother was beaten out for control of the local congregation.

So this is a happy union for me.

I know a lot of people frown on the ELCA's ecumenical activities. It's easy to be cynical. We engage in years of dialogue with another church body, discussing our differences, and then eventually announce that we are more or less in agreement on the relevant issues. To the extent that this is a fair charge, it is a lamentable exercise.

But that's not generally the way I look at it. I tend to take a broad view of the satis est clause in the Augsburg Confession and the corresponding definition that "the Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered."

There is of course a lot to be discussed in asking whether the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered, and Luther himself didn't exactly set a generous table in this regard. But I for one don't think a theology exam needs to be involved. Is Jesus Christ proclaimed? Are Baptism and the Lord's Supper offered? That's good enough for me. I am a big fan of the slogan that Christ said "Take and eat" not "Take and understand."

All these words, and I still haven't said anything about the recent agreement....

The background material for the recommendation that was appoved in Orlando mentions that last year's UMC convention introduced "an amendment to clarify reference to a common misunderstanding among United Methodists that Lutherans believe in consubstantiation." This is an interesting tidbit. I find that a lot of Lutheran's don't quite understand this either. It's not at all unusual to hear a Lutheran talking enthusiastically about consubstantiation. Oops.

The actual text of the approved recommendation included a call "to now recognize the United Methodist Church as a church in which the Gospel is preached and taught." OK, so we've got half of the requirements for the Church there (assuming we wink at their semi-Pelagianism). I was surprised it didn't go ahead and add "and the Sacraments are administered."

If nothing else came of the dialogue between Lutherans and Methodists, it may have been worth it just to have the UMC produce the document, This Holy Mystery. I haven't had time to consider it in detail, but on the whole it looks like a pretty interesting document.

The introduction begins by explaining what Methodists will get from a deeper consideration of the Lord's Supper. It says:

According to the results of a survey conducted by the General Board of Discipleship prior to the 2000 General Conference, there is a strong sense of the importance of Holy Communion in the life of individual Christians and of the church. Unfortunately, there is at least an equally strong sense of the absence of any meaningful understanding of Eucharistic theology and practice.

That they want to do something about this is something I rejoice to hear. What wonderful things can come of a longing for a deeper encounter with the Eucharist!

My own limited experiences with the United Methodist Church have left me with the impression that their worship is dry. Maybe it's just the congregations I've visited. Maybe it's just my own dependence on smells and bells. Either way, it's not a setting I would want to call home.

One of the things all too often lacking in ecumenical dialogue is any kind of substantial change in either dialogue partner. It would be nothing short of miraculous if Lutheranism could impart a deeper appreciation for the Lord's Supper as a spiritual gift to Methodists. (A serious call to discipleship and spiritual formation would most likely be what they would offer us in return, but I've seen few indications that the ELCA is experimenting with that.)

Later, the UMC document says, "Prevenient grace is that which 'comes before' anything we can do to help ourselves." And suddenly I am sharply awakened from the slumber I was slipping into reading the document. Who let the scholastics in here? Why are we talking to these heretics? I'm out of here!

But they quickly add, "In truth, all grace is prevenient—we cannot move toward God unless God has first moved toward us." The first part of the sentence is encouraging; the second part sounds like semi-Pelagian hedging. Overall, I'll lean toward charity and take it as just a foreign way of talking.

Further along, the document declares, "Holy Communion is eschatological." This is fantastic! I read an essay a while ago by Joachim Jermias where he made the claim that the petition for daily bread in the Lord's Prayer is essentially eschatological and connected with the Lord's Supper. This kind of reflection can really enrich our appreciation of the Sacrament.

But the real queston every Lutheran is asking is, "Do they believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament?" (Not that that has kept us out of communion with other denominations.) On this question, This Holy Mystery proclaims, "Jesus Christ, who 'is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being' (Hebrews 1:3), is truly present in Holy Communion." Not quite an affirmation of Christ's words "This is my body" but on the whole a good start.

Later the document states, "The consecrated elements are to be treated with reverent respect and appreciation as gifts of God’s creation that have, in the words of the Great Thanksgiving, become 'for us the body and blood of Christ.'" That's much better, but I'm suppose anyone who wanted to could wiggle out of it.

The real talking point for me is what we are really going to require. Are we going to insist on a strict agreement that "the body and blood of Christ are truly and essentially present, and are truly distributed and received with the bread and wine."? Are we going to split hairs over what we mean by that?

I'm not suggesting that we relax our own Lutheran teaching on this (although it may be questioned how much it is relaxed or even dropped in local congregations). But to me, the essence of the Lutheran teaching on the Lord's Supper is that Jesus Christ truly comes to me in the Sacrament. Beyond this, I believe in respecting the mystery. I need not know how Christ comes to me, only that he does. I understand the historic controversies in this regard as centering around what seemed to be denials of this basic fact (for instance, if Christ does not come to me in body and blood, he has not truly come). If we get legalistic about our manner of Christ's presence, we are in danger of slipping into a Lutheran scholasticism.

But now I feel like I've gone down a rabbit trail. My consideration of the agreement between the United Methodist Church and the ELCA has gotten all tangled up in Lutheranism. To extricate myself summarily, let me just say, I'm pleased with the Interim Eucharistic Sharing agreement with the UMC. If only we took our theology as seriously in daily practice as we do when in dialogue over ecumenical agreements!

What Is Lutheranism?

When I first came across the announcement of the Lutheran Carnival, I was excited by the idea, because I truly love Lutheranism and I liked the idea of reveling in it with other Lutherans (perhaps not exactly the point of the carnival, but that's what I think of it). I knew that I swim in different waters than a lot of my fellow Lutheran bloggers, but I thought perhaps a little diversity might be appreciated.

Then as I read the requirements for entries, I saw that the organizers were asking that submitters make a "quia subscription to the Book of Concord." I thought that I was probably the sort of person this meant to disinvite, and I chafed at the idea. I chafed so much that I blogged a complaint.

Then Eric Evers of xphiles fame, a fellow ELCA blogger, challenged my complaint. He said, "it's not exactly unreasonable to expect members of a confessional movement to subscribe to the movement's confessions." I certainly can't argue with that (though I did). His response provoked me to thought, the results of which you are now reading.

Evers described for me a "quia subscription" as believing in the Lutheran Confessions because they accurately teach what the Bible teaches, and he contrasted it with a "quatenus subscription" as believing in the Lutheran Confessions in so far as they accurately teach what the Bible teaches. The thing is, neither one of those positions really describes what the Lutheran Confessions mean to me.

At times, I might use either mode of thought. I do think that the Lutheran Confessions express the truth of the Bible wonderfully. But, in so far as I am a theologian (and that isn't very far), I am not a 16th century theologian (my pen name not withstanding). Thus I occaisionally have issues with the way the Book of Concord (and particularly the Formula of Concord, in its precision) formulates things.

But what do I really think of the Book of Concord? This is what I've been wrestling with since reading Evers' response to my rant. And as I've struggled to articulate it, a good Lutheran theologian came to my aid: George Lindbeck.

In his book The Nature of Doctrine, Lindbeck considers two models of doctrine, which he calls "cognitive" (doctrines are propositional truths which are either true or false) and "experiential-expressive" (doctrines are merely symbols of inner feelings). He rejects both as being inadequate and proposes a third approach, a "regulative" model that views doctrines as rules which provide a framework for thinking and talking about God.

The dichotomy between a "quia" subscription and a "quatenus" subscription is clearly based on a cognitive model of doctrine. It maintains that if we stray from our Lutheran castle then we must be saying, directly or indirectly, that the Lutheran Confession are in some way false. But in fact, I am saying no such thing. Rather it is my intention to sing the same song, but perhaps in a different key.

I have a fairly low opinion of the experiential-expressive approach to doctrine and so I won't even bother to address it.

But I would like to attempt to describe what it means to be a Lutheran within a regulative model of doctrine. As Lindbeck describes the regulative model of doctrine, it sees doctrine as being analogous to the syntax rules that govern how you speak a language. If you violate the rules, what you say isn't just wrong, it's meaningless.

His primary example is the Christological dogmas of the Church. If we are to speak about Jesus, we must speak about him in accordance with the dogmas of the Church as spelled out at Chalcedon, et. al. If you do not speak about Jesus in this way, you are no longer speaking of the Jesus in whom Christians confess their faith.

The first criticism that will come up is that this is a way of behaving as if our doctrines were true without really committing to that truth. But that's not what I intend by it. I would, however, claim that believing in the doctrines and behaving as though they were true can't be separated.

The Book of Concord, as I see it, defines who we are as Lutherans. Along with the Bible, it is foundational to our Lutheran identity. It expounds the Lutheran way of reading the Bible, and if we do not read the Bible in harmony with the Book of Concord, we are no longer Lutherans in any meaningful way.

When I speak about justification, my speech is shaped by, defined by, given meaning by the expositions of justification by faith in the Book of Concord. Though I may seek other ways of expressing what justification seems to me to mean, justification by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone will always be the backbone, nay the full skeletal structure of my thought. And I am fully aware that if I stray from it, what I produce will be a grotesque disfigurment.

So, do I make a "quia subscription" to the Book of Concord? Yes, no, kind of, not really.... Can I claim I don't understand the question? But I can say without reservation that the Book of Concord is the shape of my Christian thought.

A curious feature of Lindbeck's proposal is that he isn't saying this is the way doctrine should work. He is saying this is the way doctrine does work, whether we acknowledge it or not. He's not saying, for instance, that the cognitive-propositional model is bad, just that it doesn't account for the way doctrine functions in our churches.

So with what I've said above about the Book of Concord defining who we are as Lutherans, I believe that strongly confessional Lutherans recognize this, and it is certainly true of them. What I'm suggesting is that whether or not we allow our faith and practice to be grounded in the Book of Concord is more foundational than any truth claims we make about it's contents.

This would, of course, still leave the ELCA open to much criticism. A lot of what goes on in the ELCA isn't grounded in the Book of Concord. But it would open an avenue of dialogue, a place of common ground, between those of us in the ELCA who are serious about Lutheranism and those outside the ELCA who don't understand us.

Thoughts On Carl Braaten's Open Letter

Carl Braaten's recent Open Letter to Mark Hanson has caused quite a splash in the blogosphere. It's encouraging to see the level of interest. The letter is a complaint about the widespread influence of liberal Protestantism in ELCA. Though it may be a bit opaque to lay people, everyone who follows the national goings on in the ELCA will have some feel for what it's about. If you want a clearer understanding, Chip Frontz has posted an excellent guide to the theology of the letter here.

Dr. Braaten is a distinguished theologian, and is certainly well-qualified to raise an alarm such as he has. I am not a person of such distinction, and in what follows it will be apparent that I am a layman and an amateur. (As C.S. Lewis once wrote, "Any theologian will see easily enough what, and how little, I have read.") Perhaps my opinion here can be seen as a view from the trenches.

As I read in Dr. Braaten's letter of "the apostasy that looms on the horizon of our beloved Lutheran Church" I can't help but hear reference to the present sexuality issues. I recognize that his letter is actually addressing a more general theological problem, but all Christianity must eventually be practical Christianity, and right now this is the topic in which the theological controversy is manifested. It's unfortunate that Dr. Braaten does not address this topic directly, because it leaves me unclear as to exactly where he stands and makes his overall argument difficult to evaluate.

I consider myself to be a traditional Christian and a relatively confessional Lutheran. Yet I cannot align myself with the renewing movements in the ELCA that I've come across. The congregation of which I am a member has an active Word Alone group. A couple of years ago, one of the leaders of this group came to me and asked how I, as a vocal admirer of Luther, could support CCM. Now the people in this same group are puzzled as to how I, as a faithful Christian, could hold the views I do on homosexuality.

You see, although I hold traditional views on things like the authority of scripture, I am in favor of full acceptance of gay and lesbian Christians in the Christian community. Notice that I didn't say that I am in favor of blessing same-sex unions and ordaining people in committed same-sex relationships. Being forced to take a position on those questions, I do support the so-called "liberal" side, but those aren't really the things I am in favor of. I am in favor of full acceptance of gay and lesbian Christians in our community of faith. And I believe the Bible tells me that I should be. If that causes me to keep some questionable company, so be it. One of the myths surrounding the sexuality issue is that everyone on the "liberal" side is theologically liberal. It simply isn't so.

But addressing Dr. Braaten's concerns more directly, the issue, as I understand it, is one of where God speaks. Chip Frontz, in his explanation of Dr. Braaten's letter, cited the United Church of Christ's slogan "God is Still Speaking" as symptomatic of a Protestant culture that sees God's will as being revealed in personal experience and in society. I can certainly see the danger there, but I nevertheless do believe that God is still speaking, and I believe that such is a fundamental tenet of Lutheranism.

Karlfried Froehlich observes that while the conservative Anglican J.I. Packer wrote a book on the authority of scripture titled God Has Spoken if a Lutheran had written the book it would have been called God Is Speaking. This is, of course, because of the Lutheran belief that the Word of God is a Living Word which addresses us as we hear it. Dr. Braaten cites Wolfhart Pannenburg to the effect that "a church that cannot take the Scriptures seriously is no longer a church that belongs to Jesus Christ" but I hope he would agree that a church which no longer allows itself to be addressed by the Scriptures is also no longer a church that belongs to Jesus Christ.

Dr. Braaten names Bonhoeffer among those who taught him what it means to be a Lutheran. I also have been shaped by Bonhoeffer, though only through my own understanding of his writings. Although I could misunderstand, I find much in Bonhoeffer's Ethics to support my way of approaching the sexuality issue. In particular, Bonhoeffer says that the word of God cannot be heard and stored away for later use. Rather, hearing and obeying must be united, otherwise it is no longer God to whom we are responding. It is in this sense that I feel compelled to stand in union with gay and lesbian Christians regardless of the theology of those who are also standing with them.

Thus while I do hear the truth in Dr. Braaten's letter, and I share much of his concern, I believe we must be careful in how we apply this concern. How fitting that this letter emerged in the week in which the parable of the wheat and the tares was the Gospel text!

An Open Letter To Brian McLaren

Hi Brian,

I just finished reading your book, A Generous Orthodoxy. I liked it a lot, and I think it will do a lot of good for Christians and the people we meet. Thanks for writing it. But I have to say, I was distressed by the lack of a chapter called "Why I Am Lutheran." So I thought I would write to you and tell you a little about why I am Lutheran to get you started with this chapter for the second edition (which is necessitated by this grievous omission).

It seems to me that Calvinists have a blind spot which prevents them from seeing Lutheranism. It's as if they think we're just eccentric Calvinists. This can be seen in the persistent use of the phrase "Luther and Calvin" -- something you don't hear often in Lutheran circles. I once heard an analogy that imagined Calvin and Luther cleaning out a cluttered dresser drawer. Calvin dumped everything out of the drawer and only put back the things he knew he needed. Luther removed everything he knew he didn't need and kept the rest. The result, of course, is quite different.

As it turns out, the "catholic" chapter was the one that seemed to me to be closest to Lutheranism (and, yes, I can imagine Lutherans inventing Mardi Gras -- we call it Oktoberfest). But Lutherans have a good bit to offer in our own right.

One of the great things Lutheranism has to offer to the Church at large is our rich theological tradition, beginning, of course, with Luther himself but also featuring such giants Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Schweitzer, Bonhoeffer, Bultmann and Tillich and continuing to the present day with the likes of Terrence Fretheim and George Lindbeck. No one will be a fan of all of these theologians, but that's just the point. We Lutherans place a high value on free inquiry (our strongly confessional branches notwithstanding).

A second thing that Lutherans bring to the table is our beautiful musical heritage. If we had no one in the stable but J.S. Bach, he alone would tower over all other traditions, but we do have more than that. Luther himself was something of a musician and gifted the Church with "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" while bringing hymns to a place of prominence in the life of Protestantism. This tradition has continued, and in the present day we have such geniuses as Marty Haugen carrying the torch.

Returning to theology, I would highlight our crown jewel: the Theology of the Cross. Luther said, "The Cross alone is our theology." A theologian of the cross seeks to comprehend God through suffering and the cross. That is, we reject the easy path, the path of glory, in religion and seek to enter into the suffering of the world around us, knowing that God will meet us there. Lutheran pastor Daniel Erlander says it this way:

As we view the cross all of our human attempts to find [God] are exposed as illusions. We do not find God by...

• proving his existence by the wonder of nature or the power of logic.


• validating his presence by visible blessings.


• having a prescribed religious experience.


• earning divine love by our good works.


• building glorious religious institutions.


• reaching a high level of personal morality.


• saving ourselves through status, wealth, knowledge, consumption, chemicals, positive thinking, correct religious doctrine, self help groups, health foods or exercise plans.

We do not find God. God finds us - in our darkness, our pain, our emptiness, our loneliness, our weakness.

Moving on to brighter things, I am a Lutheran because of the Lutheran understanding of the Word of God. This is the one plug we got in A Generous Orthodoxy. The Anglican J.I. Packer wrote a book about the Bible called "God Has Spoken." Lutheran church historian Karlfield Froelich observes that if a Lutheran had written it it would have been called "God Is Speaking." Lutherans understand the Word of God as a living address that is active and powerful in the world. Luther once said that the Word of God reformed the Church while he slept or drank beer with his friends. "I did nothing," he said. "The Word did it all."

Lutherans have a multifaceted understanding of the Word of God that begins with Jesus Christ and continues to the ways he is made present in the world. As such, we see preaching as the Word of God (which I think is the way the New Testament uses the phrase), but the the words of absolution that follow confession are also the Word of God, as are the words that accompany the sacraments, and, of course, the Bible. But Lutherans often emphasize that the Bible is only the Word of God in as far as it makes Christ present to us. When it does not do that (because we are using it as a club with which to beat our opponents, for instance), it is not the Word of God.

Finally, and this could easily be listed first, I would emphasize the Lutheran understanding of baptism as God's promise and Christ's call. Baptism has the sort of central importance for Lutherans that the Eucharist does for Catholics. Through baptism we are incorporated in Christ and receive all of his benefits, including new life and salvation from sin, death and the power of the devil. We believe that we receive all these things because God has promised them to us and in baptism bestows them upon us. Baptism is like having the Gospel poured over your head. But Lutherans are also beginning to rediscover that in baptism, Christ lays hold of us. When we are baptized, we are called into mission, called to be followers of Christ. In baptism, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. We are Christians, and because of our baptism, we are called to live as Christians.

I could go on and talk about such things as Christ coming to us in the communion meal, about the priesthood of all believers, and about our recognition that we are at once sinners and saints, but I've probably said enough already.

So, once again I thank you, Brian, for your book A Generous Orthodoxy -- it is a wonderful contribution to the Christian faith -- and I look forward to an update when you also become Lutheran.

-Mel