We seem to be obsessed with our beliefs (I know I am). This portion of Theology of the Lutheran confessions by Edmund Schlink was helpful. It refers to the Lutheran confessions but can be taken more generally as the confessions of the church of all time.
More Important Than Your Beliefs…
There is much in this excerpt, Phil, which, as an Orthodox Christian, I can accept. The Church is the bulwark and pillar of the Truth as St. Paul declares to St. Timothy. Of course, we Orthodox understand Truth here to refer to Christ, not to Scripture alone, which is, of course, a divisve topic between our two confessions. However, the Lutheran Confessions are still essentially the product of one man, Martin Luther and others. Now, I am all too aware of their insistence that they added nothing new but were excising the abuses which Rome had perpetrated, especially after her self-imposed split from the Most Holy Orthodox Church. However, Luther and his followers introduced the idea of “Here I stand, I can do no other.” The sheer egoism that Luther was right no matter what has been carried into every Protestant denomination (which number in the hundreds of thousands!) because every reformer or preacher insisted his view was the right one and the further then the Protestants became not only from Rome, but especially from the Most Holy Orthodox Church. The faulty ecclesiology which has pervaded Protestantism from its inception has placed its hope and its future on Holy Scripture alone whereas Rome has placed her hope on the Pope and the Magisterium of the Church.
I applaud you for standing up for the Lutheran Confessions, much of which I find no objection with. Even Luther’s Small Catechism, for the most part, could serve well for Orthodox Catechesis. Lutheranism today, for the most part, has really excised itself from the Confessions. How else can one explain the multiple versions of Lutheranism that exist today and for some reason they are all in communion, when so many key doctrines are skewed and altered by individuals.
The Lutheran Reformation triggered the rise of the rights of the individual, of course detailed so well by Enlightenment writers such as Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau and the capitalist ethic. That rise of the “I” also triggered the dissolution of the Confessions in modern Lutheranism for the “I”s have become more important than the Church.
Forgive my bluntness, Phil. As you know, this was one of the main reasons why I left the Lutheran Church, in the first place. If Lutheranism, especially where and when I had experienced it, still remained confessional in its truest sense, my departure would have been delayed or ceased.
But, Phil, I implore you to remain true to the Lutheran Confessions and stop the chaos that is chipping away all the more at the synod.
Chris, at times I feel you paid too much attention to the denomination at the Synod level, and not the congregational level, where I feel most clergy have strayed far less than at the denominational level. This is not to say we do not have problem, but paying attention to synodical politics amplifies those problems beyond their reality.
And I will try.
Phil,
You wrote: “Chris, at times I feel you paid too much attention to the denomination at the Synod level, and not the congregational level, where I feel most clergy have strayed far less than at the denominational level.”
I mean no disrespect to your father, who was my catechism teacher and confirmed me along with you so many years ago, however, it was what was going on at the congregational level, even at Hope, that had to make me consider leaving. The disparagement of the traditional Divine Liturgy to make room for hip, new innovations really went the wrong way with me, the denial and rewriting of basic Christian history, the tendency in all things towards a Fundamentalist or Baptist theology, the lack of encrouagement for any kind of spiritual warfare and ascesis. All of that, which I experienced not only at Hope growing up but at LCMS congregations all around the midwest, was so rampant that my only choice was to leave and pursue the truth where it was taught in the fullness that Christ gave it, i.e. the Most Holy Orthodox Church.
Again, PHil, don’t get me wrong, if Lutheranism were practiced in accordance with its confessions and divine tradition, then my leaving would have been delayed or not occurred. But the fact is that modern day Lutheranism is not the same as in Luther’s day. So much more has been discarded because individuals say that the confessions were only a public-relations set or don’t apply to the modern world. There is no standard save for one’s self. And I can say, with what little humility I have, that I am not the Church. I am part of the Body of Christ with my own function, but I don’t call the shots.
What is happening at the synodical level is very much happening in the congregations. I do know of a handful of pastors faithful to the confessions who will continue to guard the orthodoxy of Lutheranism, but they are few and far between. And with your current pope reelected to office, they will be a memory in but a generation and the Lutheranism practiced by the LCMS will be no different than the “theology” practiced by Baptists or other Fundamentalists. It is a sad thing.