A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Questions for Lutherans (and others)

Thomas at Without Authority posted recently on the raison d’etre of Protestant denominations. He raised the idea, favored by Lutheran theologians like Jenson and Braaten that Lutheranism is, in essence, a reforming movement within the church catholic.

My question, especially to Lutheran readers, is this: Do you still regard the gospel of justification by faith as the “article by which the church stands or falls”? If so, how do you understand that? And do you see this being lived out in your church (or the church at large)?

I ask because if the purpose of Lutheranism, as a reforming movement, is to share this insight with the rest of the church, I am by no means convinced that this is what most Lutheran churches are doing, or see themselves doing. And if they’re not, what is the justification (pardon the pun) for their existence? (I should note that I’m speaking here mostly about ELCA churches because those are the ones I’m familiar with, but I’d also be interested in hearing the observations of LCMS or other Lutheran readers.)

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10 responses to “Questions for Lutherans (and others)”

  1. Rick Ritchie

    Well, I as a Lutheran have done what I could to spread Lutheranism. But I think it may be true that much of Lutheranism does not do this. But I’m not exactly sure I know what Jenson means. Even in the first generation, I think what many wanted was to have Lutheran congregations to attend. To say that this movement was in the church catholic might mean that they wanted those congregations to retain what continuity they could, rather than starting from scratch. When I find online discussions of whether we should be “doing church” at all, I know that this is not theoretical.

    I do hold that justification by grace alone through faith alone is necessary. But I think it happens beyond the borders of where the doctrine is explicitly taught. I don’t think that people can be saved by grace through works, or by grace through faith and works. I also don’t think they can be saved by something other than grace.

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  2. Chris

    The purpose of Lutheranism is not to reform the Church Catholic (nor the Roman Catholic Church). Rather, our purpose is to proclaim Jesus Christ in Word, deed, and sacrament.

    I don’t buy this idea that we are primarily or only a reforming movement within the Church Catholic. Perhaps that was the intent of the Reformers at the beginning of their movement, but they soon came to recognize that what truly mattered was the proclamation of the Gospel and the proper use of the means of grace, not any institutional affiliation.

    Or, put another way, I don’t believe the Reformers saw their church as a lesser church because it was separate from the Roman Catholic Church. I don’t necessarily see the destiny of my Lutheran Church as being intimately intertwined with the Roman Church. Our tradition is a church in its own right, by the nature of its preaching and sacramental practice, that is, by the presence of the Living Word in our midst.

    Finally, some quotes about the nature of the church from the excellent work by Wengert & Lathrop, Christian Assembly: Marks of the Church in a Pluralistic Age:

    “Church is not a noun; it is a verb, an event, or, to use the language of the sixties, a happening.” (page 27)

    “Where Christ is preached, there the Holy Spirit is, and hence the church happens.” (page 74)

    “For [Luther], church was less an institution and more an event. It occurred precisely where God’s word and faith collided.” (page 102)

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  3. Rev. Paul T. McCain

    We have found one of the best ways to share the message of Lutheranism is simply to let folks read an edition of our Confessions that is reader-friendly.

    http://www.cph.org/concordia

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  4. lutherpunk

    A Few Bullets

    -Justification by grace alone is absolutely the most important thing as I understand it, and the chief reason I remain Lutheran.

    -I think we are a reform movement for the Church Catholic.

    – I don’t foresee us ever being in visible unity with Rome on an ecclesial level. We have taken our reform to a place where there is new and significant disagreement (ie Women’s Ordination, lay celebration etc).

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  5. Andy

    Do you still regard the gospel of justification by faith as the “article by which the church stands or falls”?

    There’s a lot of translation necessary to get that statement out of the sixteenth century, and even if we leave it in the sixteenth century, we need to rescue it from the ham-fisted handling of the latter part of the sixteenth century. You’ve made a good start by referring to the “gospel of justification by faith” rather than the “doctrine of justification by faith.”

    The way I see it, Lutheranism does not exist (now or ever) to promote the doctrine of justification by faith alone within the Church, though often we’ve acted as though that were our purpose (and I believe Jenson as much as says so in his book Lutheransim co-authored with Eric Gritsch). Rather Lutheranism exists to free the gospel from any and all shackels of Church dogmas and traditions which might get in its way. Unless I’m mistaken, when Luther says that justification by faith alone is the article by which the Church stands or falls he does not mean that to be the true Church we must teach the pure doctrine of justification by faith alone (no matter what CA 7 says). Rather he means that unless we are justified by faith alone, the Church doesn’t have a chance anyway.

    Here’s what Luther says in the Smalcald Articles, “And upon this article all things depend which we teach and practice in opposition to the Pope, the devil, and the world. Therefore, we must be sure concerning this doctrine, and not doubt; for otherwise all is lost, and the Pope and devil and all things gain the victory and suit over us.” The lumping together of “the Pope, the devil and the world” isn’t just polemics. It reveals that Luther isn’t thinking of this in terms of denominationalism or doctrine. He’s thinking in terms of mission and eschatology. The Church depends (relies) on justification by faith. It is the life of the Church, not a condition.

    Now it’s a long way from here to the reforming movement of Jenson and Braaten, but I think most of us can leave that path-forging to the ecclesiologists. For the rest of us, if we live the gospel that the Church exists by faith alone, then our calling is to proclaim the Gospel wherever we are and trust in God for the rest of it. (In other words, I agree with what Chris said.)

    What’s left for us to decide is whether Lutheranism is a small reforming movement that just needs to tie up a few loose ends to create the nice, tidy, institutional Church that we want, or whether Lutheranism is still a vibrant reforming movement that has only just begun to work out the implications of Luther’s insight. There might be a lot of work left to do.

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  6. Thomas Adams

    I feel that some have misunderstood Jenson’s comment about Lutheranism as a “confessing movement for the sake of the church catholic.” Notice that he says confessing movement, not reforming movement. Our job is not simply to point out where the RC church has gone wrong in the hopes that they might change (although we shouldn’t hesitate to do this). Our job is to (as Chris says) “proclaim Jesus Christ in Word, deed, and sacrament”; that is, our job is to confess. Jenson’s point is that this confessing and proclaiming is done within and for the sake of the universal church, which can potentially include all bodies – Protestant, RC, and Orthodox. I agree that the Lutheran church is no less a church than the RC, and that’s certainly not what Jenson is trying say. He’s merely emphasizing that the Lutheran church has no existence apart from the church catholic – we are a movement, not an institution. If we accept our separate existence as final, then we’ve become nothing more than a sect.

    I agree wholeheartedly with Andy’s distinction between promoting a doctrine of justification and actually preaching justification through faith alone. The former is mere legalism while the latter remains the “article by which the church stands or falls” The church is formed by the justifying Word – it does not own this Word as a possession. Lutherans have often forgotten this.

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  7. Lee

    Thanks all for the great comments.

    Regarding justification by faith, I think it was N. T. Wright (not usually thought of as a particularly Lutheran-friendly thinker) who said something to the effect of “Salvation comes through faith in Jesus not believing in ‘justification by faith.’” In other words, it’s not a doctrine but a person who is the object of faith. Jenson and Gritsch seem to be getting at a similar point when they offer JBF as a kind of grammatical rule for offering Christ to people – we should always offer the gospel as a word of unconditional promise. So, looking at it that way, the “reforming” aspect is, as Andy and others suggest, to make sure that nothing obscures the promise the way that a lot of medieval piety and church practice seemed to Luther et al. to do.

    And thanks, Thomas, for the clarification on Jenson’s idea of Lutheranism as a confessing movement – my original post bred some confusion there I think. Though, I wonder, given Jenson and Braaten’s expressed support for more robust “visible” forms of unity, including a reformed papalism, if he hasn’t wandered from his Lutheran roots?

    In fact, there was an interesting discussion recently on this topic here: http://inhabitatiodei.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/on-remaining-protestant/. In fact, I tried to defend something like the understanding of “church” that Chris is describing.

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  8. Thomas Adams

    You’re absolutely right, Lee, that Jenson has wandered away from his Lutheran roots, especially in recent years. I’m not even sure if he’s still Lutheran – I once heard that he now attends an Episcopal church.

    I’ve been plenty critical of Jenson and Braaten over at my blog. To me, they represent an ecumenism-at-all-cost approach, often practiced with considerable disdain for the Protestant side. But this is a fairly recent development. Their writings from the 1970’s, particularly Jenson’s Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings and Braaten’s Principles of Lutheran Theology, remain excellent examples of theology that is evangelical and catholic, in the best sense of both words.

    Something I forgot to say in my previous comment: While I largely agree with what Chris wrote, I’m surprised by his comment he “doesn’t necessarily see the destiny of my Lutheran Church as being intimately intertwined with the Roman Church.” Given our common pre-Reformation heritage, I find this hard to swallow. Even post-Reformation, the vigorous polemics clearly suggest that both sides felt they had a stake in the future of the other church. This remains true today. We may be estranged brothers but we remain brothers nevertheless, and our destiny (even if eschatological) is to be reconciled.

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  9. Kevin Carson

    I think all of the present-day denominations that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were originally intended as movements within the “church catholic.” The Anglican church saw itself as the proper model for a Catholic church without the pope; the Presbyterians and Congregationalists saw their forms of organization, respectively, as the proper form of church government for the catholic church; etc., etc. Denominationalism, as we know it, emerged later as part of the religious settlement of the Glorious Revolution.

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  10. Rick Ritchie

    “In other words, it’s not a doctrine but a person who is the object of faith.”

    True.

    But I’m glad you added Jenson and Gritsch’s rule. Otherwise the same legalistic error could be made, only in personal terms. Christ could be made into a new Moses. That a legalism centers on a person rather than a doctrine doesn’t make it better.

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