The Victorious Life in the Augsburg Evangelical Faith

In catechizing my children a few weeks ago, I noticed that victory over sin is indeed part of the Augsburg Evangelical life:

God, indeed, tempts no one; but we pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us, so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us, nor seduce us into misbelief, despair, and other great shame and vice; and though we be assailed by them, that still we may finally overcome and gain the victory.

First, we see what the first opponent of the victorious life is: misbelief. This is because misbelief, by teaching wrong ideas of God, the Lord, and the Spirit, and of the forgiveness of sins, closes the door back to Them. And the second is despair, because that leads us to conclude there is no way back to Him. After that follows all the great shames and vices that can't finally kill us as long as we do not fall into misbelief or despair. And why "great"? Do we not pray against venial shames and vices? No, because, as Walther taught in his Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel, in their inherent nature all sins are mortal.

So where is this victory? It is worth noticing that it is not in the third article of the Creed as something the Holy Spirit gives us (as He does the forgiveness of sins in baptism), but in the exposition of the Lord's Prayer's Sixth Petition "But lead us not into temptations, but deliver us from evil." In other words, victorious living has its place in the Evangelical life not in some assertion of what is factually true or what we are or are not capable of, or receive from the Holy Spirit, but in our prayer. Victory is what it is our privilege and duty to pray for. And praying for it we know, as soon as we say, "amen," that we shall have what we pray for. Because what does "amen" mean?

That I should be certain that these petitions are acceptable to our Father in heaven and heard; for He Himself has commanded us so to pray, and has promised that He will hear us. Amen, Amen; that is, Yea, yea, it shall be so.

To doubt that God will grant us the victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil who torment us is to contravene the very Word of God. And to set a time in our minds when this victory must come is to tempt God, either by saying it must be achieved now, or by saying it must not be achieved now, but only in heaven. Rather we pray for it sincerely all our lives according to our Lord's teaching, we know it will happen, and we leave it up to God to answer us in His time.

Lutheran Carnival XXV: Whitsunday

As you probably all know by now, Lutheran Carnival XXV is up at Mrs. T. Swede's "Journalistic Jargon." My favorite things about this particular carnival? The biography of the guy we all take for granted (C.F.W. Walther), and the first post by Der Bettler at Hoc est verum on Real Church Growth. Once you get past the cringe-inducing photo of Rick Warren, it's just three points in his plan and they're real simple.

UPDATE: Check out the comments thread on Der Bettler's post. Houston, we have a problem.

Things I Just Thought I'd Say

I just felt like enunciating certain opinions:

1) I greatly admire C.F.W. Walther as a pastor and theologian.

2) I believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary. When people argue against it, their arguments always seem, well, sort of vulgar, which makes me think they're probably wrong.

3) I have through personal contact and writings known a number of people in Renewal in Missouri and Jesus First whom I greatly respect (haven't yet found any such in Daystar, though)

4) I feel a much greater sense of urgency about unity within our Evangelical confession (LCMS, WELS, ELS, etc.) than about similar unity with those outside our Confession.

5) The doctrinal differences on which the various confessional Lutheran churches separate themselves are both so subtle and so intimately related to the contemporary church's position in the USA that it seems to beggar imagination that one could actually draw a convincing Biblical argument to settle them.

6) Tongues, prophecy and other charismatic gifts were rife in the Apostles' church and the Biblical arguments made for the cessation of these particular spiritual gifts (tongues, prophecy, etc.) are an insult to the intelligence of humanity. (But the Bible never said that every church all the time will have these gifts.)

7) There is no salvation outside the Church, and hence wherever you acknowledges the regular provision of salvation, there you are, whether you like it or not, acknowledging the presence of the Church there.

8) One of the great things about being a confessional Evangelical is that you don't have to care what people in megachurches or "emerging" churches do with their worship services. Confessional evangelicals who do care get the worst of both worlds: denominational when it comes to helping and loving, and ecumenical when it comes to disciplining and attacking.

9) Justification by faith apart from any works of the law, baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence, the Bible as God's infallible word, the bondage to sin of the will of fallen and unregenerate man, the duty of men (as pastors and heads of family) to provide leadership in the church family: these don't seem to me like "doubtful" or "nit-picky" points. But when you affirm them all, all you've got left is confessional Lutheranism.

C.F.W. Walther on the Three Hierarchies

Over on a thread at Here We Stand, the issue of Lutheran views of Cromwell and English Civil War (1640-1660) came up. The usual modern view of this struggle (see 1066 And All That) sees Cromwell's Roundheads (the Puritans and Parliament) as "right but repulsive" and King Charles's cavaliers (divine-right monarchy and the bishops) as "wrong but wromantic." By contrast, the father of the LCMS, C.F.W. Walther, made it clear where he personally stood:

When Cromwell, the miscreant, who sentenced his liege, the king, to death and instituted murderous and bloody trials throughout England, was at the point of death, he became alarmed. Summoning his chaplain, he asked him whether a person who had once been a believer could lose his faith, which the miserable chaplain negatived. Cromwell thereupon concluded that all was well with him, because he knew that once upon a time he had been a believer. Remembering the profound impression which the Word of God had made upon him at certain times in his life, he relied on the abominable comfort which his chaplain offered him, viz., that since he had had faith once, he still had it. This instance shows the awful effect of this doctrine of the Calvinists (Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, p. 215) .

Similar obiter dicta about "the so-called Wars of Deliverance from that monster Napoleon I" (p. 259) and how "People see the rule of the Antichrist in pantheism, materialism, atheism, socialism, nihilism, anarchism, and other horrible isms to which the modern age has fallen heir" (p. 68), put Walther in the conservative camp that saw the French Revolutionaries and their epigones as deeply pernicious in their espousal of a "right to rebel" and a replacement of the traditional estates with ideologically motivated mobilization.

At the same time, his "so-called" in front of the Wars of Deliverance and his insistence that is the Papacy, as the force anathemizing the Gospel which is the true Antichrist show that Walther resisted giving religious force and sanction to purely political struggles against the French Revolution and its legacy.

Walther's positive social vision was centered on the archaic division of society into three estates:

All mankind, you know, is distributed among three estates, appointed and ordained by God himself: the estate of teachers, of producers, and defenders, the Lehrstand, Naerstand, and Wehrstand, as the Germans call them. In view of the statement of David in Ps. 111:3 "His work is honorable and glorious," none of these God-ordained estates is to be esteemed lightly; for in each one of these estatats a person can pursue his way to heaven, please God and God's children and serve God and his fellow-men. What more do we need? In the estate of teachers we have those who teach in the Church and in the schools; in the estate of producers we have peasants, artisans, artists, and scholars; in the estate of defenders we have governors, state officers, jurists, and soldiers (Walther, Proper Distinction, p. 284).

While not specifying these as hereditary, this division is of course roughly the medieval division of clergy, nobility, and the third estate (peasants and bourgeois). Certainly this thinking is, while not specifically anti-democratic, not really in line with modern political thinking, whether of the Whig (free-market, liberty-centered) or Social-Democratic (government-managed, equality-centered) version.

This three-fold division in fact is much older than the Middle Ages and goes back to the ancient Indo-European division of society into three hereditary functions: the priests, the warriors, and the producers of wealth. This division is reflected in the social classes of India: brahmanas (priests), kshatriyas (warriors), and vaishyas (herder-farmers); of Iran: athravan- (priests), rathaestar (warriors), and vastriyo-fsuyant- (herder-cultivators); of Rome: flamines (priests), milites (equestrian knights), and quirites (plebeians). As summarized in this volume, linguistic, folkloric, and archeological research suggests this structure goes back to the common cultural progenitor of the European and Indo-Iranian peoples, in Ukraine and Southern Russia, around 4000-3000 BC.

What is particularly innovative and interesting about Walther's recasting of this three-fold distinction is his assignment of artists and scholars to the estate of producers, not teachers. In other words, creative minds are not "unofficial legislators" as the Romantic poets contended, and still less are analogous to priests as Matthew Arnold (about artists) or Richard Dawkins (about scientists) pretended, but with the humble craftsman. Painting the Sistine Chapel, or refining quantum mechanics is a worthy activity, but one more analogous to a cobbler making boots than to a schoolteacher instructing children or to a pastor building up a flock. I think present-day debates on the arts in church could benefit from this reconceptualizing the artist and researcher as producer, rather than teacher.

My 2¢

Since Dave and Josh and Chris have expressed their views about what the LCMS needs, I thought I’d throw in my two cents as well.

I really disagree with the analysis that polity is the basic problem. First of all, up to 1945, the LCMS put in a pretty good record of doctrinal and liturgical solidity combined with spectacular growth under Walther and congregationalism. But more fundamentally, having just finished Here We Stand (the book), I was strongly affected by Hermann Sasse’s insistence that polity is not a "Christian" issue. As you’ve seen, I have a great respect for the pastor plus strong lay elders and charity-dispensing deacons model of the Presbyterian church, but after reading Sasse, I repent of any effort to see that model as in any way binding on the Christian church. Christ is not a lawgiver establishing a constitution with separation of powers for His church; what law he reiterated is the common moral law of mankind. At any rate, I accept Sasse’s argument that that’s the Lutheran view. And since it is, if we were to be blessed by changing our polity, then we would show that our confessions are in fact wrong and God did give a church constitution. This does not mean that our polity might not need fine tuning; God expects us to use our brains to read the signs of the times and structure our communion most effectively to that end. I am not familiar with the call process; for all I know it could encourage congregational "shepherd stealing." But I take it as an article of faith (that then seeks understanding), that polity is not the fundamental issue.

Can Lutheranism survive without the Lutheran church? That’s the question Dave’s move gives us occasion to raise. (Occasion only - - Dave I know you’ll understand that this is long-percolating thoughts, not some effort to attack your move.) Why is it that convinced Catholics don’t leave no matter how bad the liturgy or stupid the bishop is? Because they identify the doctrine, the -ism, with the visible church. Catholicism without being organizationally a Catholic is meaningless. And why don’t Orthodox change the liturgy? Because they identify the liturgy as part of the law of Christ, given through the mind of the church. These are great unity-building doctrines. The problem I see is that Lutheranism cannot, without betraying its own confessions, adopt either of these positions in their strict form. On the other hand, it is hard not to see in the old (pre-1945) LCMS an adoption in practice of these positions. And for the church, that is functional; it works; it keeps the sheep in line. And like I noted with Burke’s "little platoons" argument/paradox, there’s nothing like strong Lutheran (or Catholic, or Presbyterian, or Orthodox, or "non-denominational") identity to keep one likewise strongly grounded in "mere Christianity." So we have to keep that strong identification of -ism with organization, without falling into un-Lutheran traps of denying our doctrine of the church being wherever Gospel is preached and the sacraments administered.

I think we all agree that the role of the family as transmitter of Christian teaching could be strengthened in the Lutheran church. That is, in fact, a divine command (Deuteronomy to Proverbs to Ephesians), and confessional as well (Luther’s three kingdoms of church, family, and state). The confessional Presbyterians are big on this and on how the church is a family (Eph. 2). As the Presbyterians have emphasized this means responsible male headship in the church as in the family. I think the recent LCMS decision that women can hold authority roles in the church apart from the pastorate is a great opportunity, because in a way it is right. Christ is not a new lawgiver. Unlike the Catholics, or the Presbyterians, we cannot make laws in the church that don’t apply to society in general (whether those outside the church actually follow it is irrelevant). So, unlike them, we will have to make our argument on the basis not of Christ established this or that constitution in the church, but rather of natural order of the family, on the natural leadership of fathers in their family, including in the family that is the church of God the Father. That’s a harder argument to make, because you have less of an out of saying "Hey, I have no problem with women in combat, or women CEO’s or women presidents, it’s just in the church rules are different." But if we make that argument successfully, I think we will also find fathers taking up the catechetical role in their families, and mothers supporting them in that role. And I think we will also find families getting bigger. Gains all the way around, again if we can make that argument. But this battle against female leadership in the LCMS is where we need to be to be for transmission of the faith in families.

Preaching to myself, I have also to say that everyone on this board out to be involved to the extent they can in adult Sunday School instruction, in voter’s meetings, and in general making ourselves ready to serve the church as laymen. It’s boring and annoying most of the time (not the Sunday School teaching which is a wonderful experience, but the voter’s stuff), but if you want to be someone people listen to when the next decision is made, you pay your dues. Woody Allen said 90% of life is showing up, and he’s right.

Originally posted at Here We Stand

"Perseverance of the Saints": We're Right, They're Wrong

In the comment box to my post "Lutheranism between Calvinism and Arminianism" [as originally posted at Here We Stand--unfortunately the comments have been deleted], Dave H. has claimed that the "perseverance of the saints" is another area in which Lutherans have manufactured bogus differences from the Calvinists and that we actually believe the same thing: the "perseverance of the elect."

Actually, by citing confessions, this is one area where the difference between the two confessions is especially clear.

The issue is, can someone who has sincerely and truly put his faith in Christ, lose his salvation while yielding to grave sin? Calvinists say no, Lutherans say yes. Practically this leads us to the following questions: 1) if someone whose faith seemed sincere and true falls away from the faith, must we believe that his faith was in fact hypocritical, however true it seemed at the time? Calvinists say yes and Lutherans say no (i.e. no, it is not true in all cases; certainly Lutherans do admit the existence of false believers); and 2) if someone first puts his faith in Christ, then falls away into knowing, grave sin, but finally returns to the faith, can we believe that that person’s original faith was maintained through his period of falling away, such that saving faith was at that time compatible with grave sin? Calvinists say yes we must so believe, while Lutherans say, no we mustn’t so believe.

Note that the issue is not: Do the elect of God ever fall into grave sin after first believing? (Calvinists and Lutherans, constrained by obvious facts, both admit the possibility, but we Lutherans teach that should that happen the elect will, if truly elect, be brought back to saving faith by the Holy Spirit before death).

Here is the relevant passage from our confessions, from the chapter of the Smalcald Articles, "Of the False Repentance of the Papists" by Martin Luther himself:

On the other hand, if certain sectarians would arise . . . . they say, besides [the cruder "once saved, always saved" idea that Luther excoriates first], that if any one sins after he has received faith and the Spirit, he never truly had the Spirit and faith: I have had before me many such insane men, and I fear that in some such a devil is still remaining.

It is, accordingly, necessary to know and to teach that when holy men, still having and feeling original sin, also daily repenting of and striving with it, happen to fall into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, that then faith and the Holy Ghost has departed from them. For the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so as to be accomplished, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. But if it does what it wishes, the Holy Ghost and faith are certainly not present. For St. John says, 1 John 3, 9: Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, ... and he cannot sin. And yet it is also the truth when the same St. John says, 1, 8: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

C.F.W. Walther in Thesis X of his The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel (pp. 210-221) adds a further citation from a letter by Luther in 1536, in which he wrote:

When a person sins against his conscience, that is, when he knowingly and intentionally acts contrary to God, as, for instance, an adulterer or any other criminal, who knowingly does wrong, he is, while consciously persisting in his intention, without repentance and faith and does not please God. . . . Faith and the worship of God are delicate affairs; a very slight wound inflicted on the conscience may drive out faith and prayer. Every tried Christian frequently is put through this experience (cited on p. 217).

By contrast, here is the relevant passage from one of their confessions, the Westminster Confession, Article 17 "Of the Perseverance of the Saints":

1. They, whom God has accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.

[Section 2 speaks of this perseverance being the result of God’s will and covenant, etc.]

3. Nevertheless, they may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins; and, for a time, continue therein: whereby they incur God's displeasure, and grieve His Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.

The approved Biblical proof texts given in the footnotes specifically reference Peter’s denial, and especially David’s adultery and murder. Hence it is clear that Luther regarded David in his year after murdering Uriah as having lost the faith, while just as clearly the Westminster divines thought the opposite. Rarely do we have such a nice and clear-cut distinction.

Why is this issue so important? It is important because it gets to the nature of faith. For a Roman Catholic, faith is mere assent to facts about salvation on the grounds that the church teaches them, and is hence compatible with mortal sin. (You can be an adulterer or drunk and still assent to Christ’s divinity, transubstantiation, etc. Such faith is real but Catholics believe this "faith" does not by itself save.)

By contrast Calvinists and Lutherans both do teach that faith is not just factual belief, but also involves trust and reliance upon the person and teaching in which one has faith. This trust and reliance comes from the Holy Spirit but is empirically verifiable, that is, it is visible both to the believer by introspection (he knows he trusts Christ) and to the outsider (his trust in Christ produces good works). Thus for a Lutheran, a theologically orthodox adulterer or drunk does not and cannot in fact have real faith, but only a mere historical faith or belief, which does not save.

But while Calvinists in theory agree with us on this issue, in fact they deny this with their doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. The Calvinist must admit that many saints are in fact in the period when their saving faith has lost its "evidence" and thus has no empirical evidence. Similarly they must admit that many who have subjective and objective evidence of faith will later be shown to be hypocrites all along, by the fact that they later fell away. In the last analysis, this article of the "perseverance of the saints" reduces Calvinist "faith" to a mysterious X which sometimes produces effects, but sometimes lives in the person’s life without any subjective or objective evidence at all, and which can moreover be indetectably counterfeited by false faith. Allowing the first possibility even in theory, let alone in the life of Biblical saints, is utterly unacceptable to the Christian and evangelical understanding of faith, and to allow the second is to open the door to constant doubt of faith.

Originally posted at Here We Stand

Charles Porterfield Krauth on Christian Ecumenism

Josh S. and Dave H. have posted their frustration with the intellectual narrowness of many practicioners of confessional Lutheranism, who are not content simply to have a right guide on all the controversial questions in the Book of Concord, but to further claims to have in it and the writings of Luther and C.F.W. Walther the absolutely sole allowable framework for every aspect of the Christian life.

In my on-going series from the Conservative Reformation and Its Theology (full text here) by Dr. Krauth (picture here and biography here), he makes some interesting comment about Puritanism, that are relevant here. He is reviewing a book about the history of Christian theology by the New England theologian William Shedd, and criticizing him for his misrepresentation of Lutheranism. In the course of so doing, he remarks on the significance of a New England theologian, heir of the Puritans, writing a history of theology:

Much of Shedd's mode of thinking is certainly not the outgrowth of anything characteristic of New England. The attitude of the original extreme Puritanism to the history of the ancient Church, was very different from his. Puritanism, as separatism, had no history for it, and hence it repudiated history. It has lived long enough to have a history, to recede from its extreme positions, and to receive new elements of life; and Dr. Shedd's book is one among many evidences that Puritanism seeks a history, and begins to appreciate its value--the value not only of its own history, but of the history of the whole Church. After all the diversities and terrible internal strifes of the nominally Christian Church, there is not any great part of it that can safely ignore absolutely any other great part. Puritanism cannot say, even to Romanism, "I have no need of thee," still less can it say so to the grand portions of evangelical Protestantism. Dr. Shedd's book shows that he has escaped from many of the narrownesses which obscured the genuine glory of Puritanism, for genuine glory it has, and a great deal of it. No book of which we know, emanating from a New England mind, shows as much acquaintance as this book does with the character and weight of Lutheran theology.

Nevertheless . . . [and here he begins to rip Dr. Shedd to shreds]

(From The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1871, pp. 330-31.)

Once simply cannot imagine Dr. C.F.W. Walther writing this paragraph. Not only would Dr. Walther see absolutely no purpose in reviewing a book by an avowed non-Lutheran, he would hardly have risked the clear implication that confessional Lutheranism, like Puritanism, needs (in any sense) the other Christian traditions.

Dr. Krauth, while unquestionably a confessional Lutheran, was a leader in the Lutheran General Synod that is the ancestor of a main component of the ELCA today. So at the time, Dr. Walther and Dr. Krauth were not in communion, and presumably Dr. Walther viewed Dr. Krauth as someone willing to associate with non-confessional Lutherans, while Dr. Krauth perhaps saw Dr. Walther as promoting a narrow, sectarian version of Lutheranism. (That Dr. Krauth wrote in English and Dr. Walther solely in German undoubtedly kept them from engaging each other intellectually to any great degree.)

So we must ask, does the rot in the ELCA today prove that Dr. Krauth's intellectually open confessional Lutheranism was misguided from the beginning? Is the possibility of some future apostasy by our misguided intellectual descendants a price we must pay for an honest appreciation of the fullness of the Christian Church today? Or indeed was the ongoing apostasy of the ELCA not inevitable? Should it be laid not at the feet of the generation of Dr. Krauth, but at the irresponsible custodianship of his legacy by succeeding generations?

For a list of all my posts on Charles Porterfield Krauth, go here.

Originally posted at Here We Stand