Entries Tagged 'Theology' ↓

Continuing the Lutheran identity discussion. . . .I want to draw your attention to Kevin N’s comments on the ‘Not For Lutherans Anymore” post. He tells about growing up in a liberal ELCA church that was all confused about the gospel. He heard and grasped what it meant that Christ died for his sins through a Campus Crusade witness in college. He went through the “are you a Lutheran or are you a Christian” phase, but now has come up to appreciate Lutheranism again, though he is a member of an Evangelical Free church. He is seeing that Lutheran theology can resolve controversies between Calvinists and Arminians–for example, on the doctrine of predestination–that are afflicting his denomination. At the same time, he sees certain gaps that the Lutheran confessions do not really address. I’ll let him tell it:

I am now in the Evangelical Free Church, and am happy with where I am at. Over the past seven years or so I have had a growing appreciation for Lutheran theology (I suppose I am 90% Lutheran in my thinking), and can see that Lutherans could make a valuable contribution in the overall discussions that go on in evangelicalism, but they are either silent or ignored. For example, in my denomination, 80% of pastors are Calvinist and 20% are Arminian, but few of either are even aware of the distinct Lutheran approach to issues such as predestination. I also believe that Lutheran Christians have a better sense of heritage and history than do most of us evangelicals.

I do see great value in the Lutheran confessions, but also believe they don’t sufficiently address issues such as evangelism, missions, or eschatology.

To non-Lutherans, I ask, what elements of Lutheran theology could you take profitably into your own church or personal beliefs, without becoming whole-hog Lutheran? Or, to all, do you think Lutheran teachings are so interlocked with each other that a person has to go all the way to Wittenberg? And, to Lutherans, I ask what you think about Kevin’s contention that our confessions do not sufficiently cover evangelism, missions, and eschatology? No one ever said that our confessions address EVERYTHING of importance that might come up, though it is possible to extrapolate applications, as we did with the doctrine of Scripture. Are there things Lutherans learn from evangelicals (keeping in mind that Lutherans were the first to go by that Gospel-centered name)?

P.S.: I also hope somebody can rise to Kevin’s challenge of identifying the titles of my books that have been translated into Romanian, since I don’t know myself!

(Non-Lutheran readers, you may want to skip this post. I don’t want you to get annoyed, but please bear with me with this reflection on Lutheran identity. Though actually, you could probably help.)

Hey, we Lutherans got a shout-out in Mitt Romney’s Mormon speech! He didn’t mention Baptists or Calvinists, but he mentioned Lutherans! And we almost never get mentioned in surveys of American religion. (OK, according to the Adherents site, there are lots of Lutherans in Mormon-heavy Western states, and Iowa ranks 6th in per-capita Lutheranism.) Here is what Mr. Romney said:

“I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life’s blessings.”

But does he really get Lutheranism right? Do we have “confident independence”? Confidence, yes, but independence? Is he confusing us with the Baptists, after all? Does that mean we are still invisible within American Christendom? Frankly, I think at our best that we exemplify ALL of those traits he hails, though I recognize that we are not always at our best. (See that lack of confidence?)

Paul S, in a comment on an earlier post about Romney, raised this quotation and thought “confident independence” had to do with “stubbornness.” May be. Any other takes on what Romney may have been thinking of?

What would be a more accurate way to characterize Lutherans? “The ______ _______ of the Lutherans.” Billy Graham might say “the sleeping giganticism of the Lutherans.” Bob Jones might say “the doctrinal strength and the moral weakness of the Lutherans.” Garrison Keillor might say, “the gloomy whimsey of the Lutherans.” What would you say?

HT: Bob Hunter

In answer to something that came up in one of the comment threads, I don’t want this to be just a “Lutheran blog.” I want all of our readers, including those from all kinds of church bodies and those from none at all, to feel welcome.

For those of you sick of all this Lutheran talk, please be patient. Actually, within American Christianity as a whole, the Lutheran perspective seldom even comes up. (Notice how all those books giving different positions on eschatology, government, etc., etc., almost never include Lutherans.) Part of that is our fault, since we often just talk with ourselves. This blog intends to be an exception.

I do think even non-Lutherans can benefit from the Lutheran take on things. We have famously been said to have a “different spirit” from other Christians (not as in the Holy Spirit, which we have in common) that can be interesting and even refreshing. Or obnoxious, so–my co-religionists–let’s don’t let it be that.

On the whole, as I keep saying, this is the best community of discourse that I have found anywhere on the internet. So JayfromCleveland, my longtime reader whom I actually met in the flesh–in Cleveland–and WebMonk, who apparently lives in the same small town I do, and the rest of you: Please stay with us!

The Third Church of Christ, Scientist, in Washington, D.C., has been declared a historical landmark because it is such a good example of the architectural style known as “Brutalism.” The building is only 36 years old, it has no windows, it is ugly, it is utterly unfunctional, and the congregation itself hates it. But now it cannot be demolished, as the congregation wants to do, or even substantially remodeled.

“Brutalism” was a radical, in-your-face style of architectural “modernism,” brutally rejecting ornament, meaning, and obsolete pre-modern notions such as beauty. It is characterized by the use of extremely rough, hardly-finished concrete, emphasizing the nitty-gritty materiality that is all there is to existence.

So why would a church want a building in the “brutalist” style? I mean, Christian Scientists don’t even believe in the true existence of the material world, so that their theology is contradicted by every detail in the building! Well, back in 1971, some of you may recall, churches wanted to be relevant to the modern world, and “brutalism” must have seemed very cutting-edge and impressive, a sure way to draw in denizens of “the secular city.”

Well, the “brutalist” sanctuary was designed to hold 400 worshippers, apparently the size of the congregation in 1971, but now it has only 40 or so. And, despite its designation as a historical relic, the building is mocked and derided as a blight to the neighborhood by the people who live in the city. One lesson to be learned is that committing yourself to a fashion is the surest way to be old-fashioned, since, by definition, fashions are always changing. Notice, by contrast, that the classical architecture of Washington’s national buildings is STILL magnificent and that it never ages in its appeal.

Another lesson is for churches today. A basic principle of aesthetics is that the form must be in harmony with the content. And when they diverge, it is the FORM that is going to communicate more than the content that it is supposed to convey. Today we have church buildings designed like pre-fab industrial buildings (conveying the message that the faith is cheap and temporary), concert halls (conveying the message that faith has to do with entertainment) and shopping malls (conveying the message that faith has to do with consumerism). Pre-modern churches were built in the shape of crosses, conveying the message that in the church people come together in the Cross of Jesus Christ. You can certainly have contemporary church architecture. My first Lutheran church had a contemporary style that communicated powerful Christian messages: a massive concrete altar; a skylight pouring in light from above; steel and brick structures that communicated the solidity and strength of what was taught in that building.)

Of course, the Gospel can be preached in any style of building or in no building. But just remember, the laws of aesthetics and the relation of form and meaning operate whether anybody likes them or not. Beware of unintended messages. And of becoming irrelevant in one’s zeal to be relevant. Remember the “brutalist” church in D.C. Stop by and see for yourself. It’s going to be around for a long time.

J. P. Moreland is a respected evangelical scholar and Christian apologist. Now he has roiled the Christian world by a paper he delivered at the recent Evangelical Theological Society conference entitled How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It.

Dr. Moreland affirms the inerrancy and the authority of Scripture, but he is decrying the way conservative Protestants tend to make the Bible the ONLY source of spiritual and moral knowledge. He thinks Christians should also consider, for example, the natural law known by reason as being a legitimate source of truth; also extra-biblical evidence for demons; also other possible sources of revelation, such as dreams, visions, prophecies, and “words of knowledge.”

I know the kind of narrowness Dr. Moreland is referring to, but I deny that the problem is being “over-committed” to the Bible. I have found that the Bible opens up my mind–even blows my mind–rather than constricting it.

As a Lutheran Christian, I do believe in natural law, the proper use of reason, the authority of our confessional heritage, but I do so BECAUSE I believe them to be Biblical. As a Lutheran Christian, though, I deny that dream, visions, prophecies, and “words of knowledge” can be thought of as authoritative revelations from God. This is what our confessions condemn as “enthusiasm,” the source of every false religion.

As for the charge of “bibliolatry” that Dr. Moreland warns of, I am almost willing to admit to the charge. The Bible can never be honored enough. Do I worship a book? Well, I worship the God who is located in the book, so you might say that. The pagan believes that his deity is localized in his graven image. I believe that the true God is localized in His Word, namely, the incarnate Son of God. That same Word is manifest in human language, written down in ink and paper on the pages of the Bible and proclaimed in sound waves that travel through the air. I hold not to an image but to the Word, not to a word that I hear inside my head but to a Word outside myself.

The Word of God is God’s voice, His communication of Himself. The Word cannot be separated from Christ, the Incarnate Word, from the Father, who inspired it, and the Holy Spirit whom it conveys. The Word is sacramental, a physical, aural thing–no less physical than water, bread, and wine–that God employs to reach us and in which He is living and active.

Perhaps the source of some of the narrowness that Dr. Moreland complains about is that Christians today often neglect the sense in which the Word is a means of grace and not just a record of facts. But the problem is surely not being committed to the Bible nearly ENOUGH.

Read Dr. Moreland’s paper and tell me what you think.

Thanks to Frank Sonnek in a comment yesterday for alerting me, via Cyberbrethren, to Charles Arand’s article in “Lutheran Quarterly” a few years ago entitled Two Kinds of Righteousness as a Framework for Law and Gospel in the Apology. A sample:

What is meant by two kinds of human righteousness? Theologically, to be
righteous is to be human as God envisioned in creation, and again in redemption. One might modify the Athanasian dictum to say, ‘‘God became fully human that we might become fully
human.’’ The distinction between two kinds of r ighteousness rests upon the observation that there are two dimensions to being a human creature. One dimension involves our life with God, especially in the matters of death and salvation. The other dimension involves our life with God’s creatures and our activity in this world. In the for mer we receive righteousness before God through faith on account of Chr ist. In the latter, we achieve righteousness in the
eyes of the world by works when we carry out our God-given responsibilities.

This concept of two kinds of righteousness, sometimes called among other terms “civil righteousness” and “inner righteousness,” is closely related to the doctrines of the Two Kingdoms and Vocation. Lutheranism has much to say about “civil righteousness,” and it is not just do whatever your government says; rather, it is a critical and positive concept about what life in the civil sphere must be. Not just that, these teachings are enshrined in our confessional documents, which are authoritative for all Lutherans, specifically, in Melanchthon’s “Apology to the Augsburg Confession,” the often-neglected sections XXII-XXVIII.

Civil righteousness has to do with God’s created order in all spheres of life (so ideologies that deny God’s creation and its objective order, whether in the realms of the true, the good, the beautiful, or the political are in violation of this teaching). Melanchthon’s doctrine of civil virtue is Aristotelian; he affirms reason; he insists on cultural engagement; he establishes the basis for classical education; and he even affirms cultural differences. His treatment is remarkably sophisticated and relevant for the issues Christians are struggling with today. I don’t know of any other theological tradition that has such a thorough and positive theology of culture than confessional Lutheranism, and I think it is something that all Christians can draw from.

That human life begins at conception is an implicit, but foundational doctrine of Christianity, according to this LifeQuotefrom Lutherans for Life:

“To deny full humanity to a conceptus [embryo] is to deny full humanity to the Savior, ‘qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria virgine’ (Latin). We worship the coming Savior, we worship the ascended Lord, we worship the resurrected Son of Man, we worship the crucified Lamb, we worship the Boy in the temple, we worship the Babe in the manger, we worship the Conceptus in the womb of the Mother of God. Amen.” Posted on Cyberbrethren a Lutheran Blog.

This is brilliant, decisive, and theologically unanswerable. The Son of God was incarnate when, in the words of the Apostle’s Creed, He was “conceived by the Holy Ghost” and later “born of the Virgin Mary.” If the fetus becomes a human being at some later point–when the soul enters the body, or when the fetus shows brain waves, or some other point–how does that apply to the Incarnation without falling into some kind of modalism or other heresy? Anyone who confesses the Apostle’s Creed must be pro-life when it comes to abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and the rest of it.

And here is a fitting devotion during Advent: Adoring Christ the Embryo.

I keep saying what a good preacher our pastor is. Now you can see for yourself. I just learned that Pastor Douthwaite runs a St. Athanasius blog on which he posts his sermons, as well as devotional materials for the congregation. Check out, for a sample, his sermon “A King Who Works for You,” which nails perfectly both our culture of pragmatism and the Theology of the Cross. This is a blog you can read, mark, and inwardly digest; and it could be a lifeline for those of you without such satisfying fare.

Now that Mike Huckabee has climbed into the first tier of presidential contenders, he is attracting attacks from all sides, not just from the left but from the right. Robert Novak has written a column branding him a “false conservative.”

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Note the condescension oozing from that paragraph. But it marks a true division between the “country club Republicans” and the more populist Christian activists. The former have been quite eager to use Christians and other social conservatives to “blast” Republicans “out of their minority status.” But to actually elect someone like that should not be allowed.

Huckabee’s alleged heresies from conservatism include his calling the elite “Club for Growth” the “Club for Greed,” for having raised taxes as governor of Arkansas, and for being concerned with the environment.

But might a Christianity-informed conservatism be different from the usual kind? Or should two-kingdom Christians focus on these economic issues at the expense of issues such as abortion?

Now that the Pope has legalized the Latin Tridentine mass as an alternative to contemporary Catholic worship, guess who is flocking to those services?

“It’s the opposite of the cacophony that comes with the [modern] Mass,” said Ken Wolfe, 34, a federal government worker who goes to up to four Latin Masses a week in the Washington area. “There’s no guitars and handshaking and breaks in the Mass where people talk to each other. It’s a very serious liturgy.”

And it is a hit with younger priests and their parishioners.

Attendance at the Sunday noon Mass at St. John the Beloved in McLean has doubled to 400 people since it began celebrating in Latin. Most of the worshipers are under 40, said the Rev. Franklyn McAfee.

Younger parishioners “are more reflective,” McAfee said. “They want something uplifting when they go to church. They don’t want something they can get outside.”

For some, the popularity of the service represents the gap between older Catholics, who grew up in the more liberal, post-Vatican II era, and their younger counterparts, who say they feel like they missed out on the tradition that was jettisoned in the move to modernize.

Frank Sonnek, in the discussion still raging on the post “YHWH, El, and the Golden Calf,” cites this sermon by Rev. William Cwirla, one of our synod’s great preachers. It’s about how Christ was forsaken on the Cross. It deserves to be printed as an evangelistic tract. The sermon, given at the Higher Things youth gathering, defies paraphrase or even selective quotation. Read it here.

My son-in-law from Australia led the Bible Study at church. He is studying for his doctorate at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, and he wants to write a dissertation on kingship in the Old Testament and how that speaks of Christ. He is doing some work on 1&2 Chronicles, so our pastor asked him to teach us about those profound but little-known books of history.

One detail he mentioned struck me in particular. He said that when Jeroboam split the kingdom into Judah and Israel, in his rule of the latter he set up two temples or shrines at Bethel and Dan so that his people would not have to sacrifice in Jerusalem. These were built on the same three-part model as that of Solomon, but instead of having the one-of-a-kind Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, Jeroboam put GOLDEN CALVES.

Why did the apostate Hebrews have such a thing for golden calves? Well, my son-in-law explained, the closest similar deity, seemingly, to YHWH in the Canaanite pantheon, the king of the gods in that mythology, was EL. His image through which he was worshiped was a golden bull. The word “El” was his name, but it was also just the word for “god.” (As in our language: We can speak of “God” as a sort of name, but also as a generic noun.)

So apparently, some Hebrews conflated the God of Abraham with the “God” of their neighbors, assuming that all “El’s” were the same and setting up a version of the common idol associated with that term. After all, the Canaanite El was a mountain god, and an El gave the law on Mt. Sinai, etc. Of course, the Canaanite El had a consort, the fertility goddess Ashera, whose sexual rites would also be picked up by some of those pious Hebrews.

Those Hebrews, however, neglected the Word of God. And how the true God commanded that He be worshipped. And violated the commandment against idolatry. And forgot that “god” is not just a generic noun but that He has a name. That is, they broke every one of the laws of the first table, and so fell into sin and slavery, until YHWH sent them a redeemer.

See any parallels with today’s religious syncretism?