A Thinking Reed

Category: Lutheranism

  • Luther’s fourfold (fivefold?) garland of prayer

    Chris at the Lutheran Zephyr has a clear and helpful summary of some of Martin Luther’s teachings on prayer, particularly his commendation of the “fourfold garland” method of prayer and his emphasis on making use of the materials contained in the catechism.

    As Chris says, in “A Simple Way to Pray,” Luther advised his barber “Master Peter” to take a verse of scripture, or one of the commandments, or a portion of the creed and make a “fourfold garland” of prayer out of it, consisting of a teaching, a thanksgiving, a confession, and a prayer (i.e., a petition). Not only does this provide ample material for prayer, but it provides a way to “internalize” the words of the Bible or the catechism.

    I sense that Chris may be taking a friendly dig at some of our blogospheric cohorts when he writes that “Simplicity is very important for popular prayer practices, as most Christians are not going to consult liturgical books to follow a form of personal daily prayer that was developed in monastaries and intended to be used as corporate prayer.” As valuable as the Daily Office no doubt is, I have to agree that, at least as far as I’m concerned, this is true, and I’ve made frequent recourse to Brother Martin’s prescription.

    If I can be a bit presumptuous, I’ve found it helpful recently to add a strand to the garland, namely a question: since I’m often unsure what a verse of the Bible or part of the creed means or how it pertains to my life or even if it’s true, I ask God as part of my prayer. Not that I get–or even expect–an answer, but I think it’s good to give voice to what we’re uncertain about and not to piously pretend that we’ve got this all down pat.

  • Quotes for Brother Martin’s birthday

    From Kim at Connexions: Happy birthday, Martin!

  • Acknowledging disagreement is not relativism

    The website of Lutheran Forum has become, for better or worse, all ELCA sex talk all the time. In this post, Sarah Wilson distinguishes two kinds of arguments that proponents of changing existing policy are making:

    One argument is simply this: homosexual activity is not a sin. That is, as long as it follows other biblical precepts like fidelity and lifelong commitment; but as such, it is not sinful.

    The general support for this is the argument that homosexual activity in this faithful and lifelong framework was simply not known to the biblical writers; the only kind of homosexual activity they knew was promiscuous, or idolatrous, but not the kind commended nowadays. This argument has the merit of straightforwardness. The best defender of it as far as I can tell is Chris Scharen (needless to say there are quite a number of points he makes I’d take issue with—but still, credit is due).

    The other argument, considerably more widespread, and ironically coming from most of our “teaching theologians,” is fairly garbled and incoherent, but if you can draw it out from the tangle, it says essentially: it doesn’t matter whether it’s a sin, because God forgives everything, gospel trumps law, all is grace, and (it seems hard to avoid this conclusion, though it is not said outright either) everyone will be saved anyway. The documents up for vote in a few weeks imply as much when they say we only have to agree about the gospel, but ethics don’t matter for the unity of the church—a bizarre assertion that probably wouldn’t hold if the sin in question were racist hate crimes, child molestation, or searching for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in foreign countries.

    I agree with her that the first argument is stronger; in fact, I think it’s true and sound. Curiously, she doesn’t cite any specific person making a form of the second argument, which raises suspicions that it’s a bit of a caricature. After all, to say that “ethics don’t matter for the unity of the church” is, as Ms. Wilson rightly points out, “a bizarre assertion.” So I would be surprised to find anyone actually making such an assertion and prepared to strongly disagree with them.

    What some people have argued (including me) is that diversity on moral judgment exists, is probably inevitable, and, to some extent, should be embraced. Lutherans agree in opposing hate crimes (though, probably not on hate crime legislation), child molestation, and searching for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction (though, again, probably not on whether the Iraq war might nevertheless have been justified).

    The fact that she selects such obvious examples of consensus actually highlights the many areas where there isn’t consensus. I mentioned a few in my previous post: war and peace, abortion, government’s role in alleviating poverty and regulating the economy. Lutherans have traditionally seen these as matters for the first (or political) use of the law, and to be determined by human judgment informed by the best available knowledge. They aren’t matters of revealed truth.

    When it comes to the blessing of same-sex relationships and the rostering of non-celibate gay and lesbian pastors, we face a similar diversity of views. My personal view is that we have good grounds for affirming same-sex relationships, given that we know, by the observation of the lives of many gay and lesbian couples, that those relationships can exhibit the fruits of the Spirit, provide their participants with the great goods of love and companionship, provide bulwarks against sin, and build up the communities of which they’re a part. Just like heterosexual marriages.

    But, as we all know, there are many folks in the church unconvinced by this, either because they think the Bible condemns all same-sex relationships, not just exploitative or promiscuous ones;* they think that the traditional teaching of the church must be maintained; or for other more discreditable reasons. Where we can, we should assume good faith on the part of those who uphold the traditional teaching (and hope they’d extend the same charity). Hence, we should all look for ways of living together that respect the different conclusions we’ve arrived at here as in other areas.

    I think the policy being considered by the ELCA is best understood both as an attempt to permit us to continue to live and worship and serve together and as an attempt to open up spaces where new ways of living as Christians can be tested. As St. Paul says: “Test all things; hold fast what is good.”

    Just as in a federal system of government, states can function as “laboratories of democracy,” we might see “structured flexibility” as an attempt to create laboratories of the spirit–spaces where the goodness of same-sex relationships, supported by their congregations, can be shown forth to the rest of the church.

    This isn’t–or at least it shouldn’t be–a matter of straight people generously “including” LGBT people in the church. Christ has already done that through baptism and the Spirit. This, fundamentally, is why the church should find ways to provide structures of support to LGBT individuals and couples, while respecting, where appropriate, the “bound consciences” of those who differ. This is not some vulgar moral relativism, but an honest recognition of where we disagree and how we might move forward as a church.

    One might observe at this point the patience being displayed by many of our LGBT members here. We heterosexuals aren’t under the burden of “proving” the value or legitimacy of our relationships to the wider church. Even the minimal standards that heterosexuals are expected to observe are rarely enforced (what is the attitude of most ELCA congregations toward straight couples who live together before marriage, for instance?). Meanwhile, gay people have their lives put on trial. In fact, I feel like I’m being presumptuous even writing about this because it’s not my relationship (or calling) that’s at stake, and I certainly don’t have the authority to speak on any else’s behalf. But I do think it’s important to be clear that what’s being proposed is not some lapse into antinomianism.
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    *Though, as Lutheran biblical scholar Arland Hultgren has pointed out, even if the exegetical judgment that the Bible does not condemn same-sex relationships per se turns out to be wrong, we still need a consistent hermeneutic. He cites in particular the church’s changed attitude toward divorce and remarriage. See: Being Faithful to the Scriptures: Romans 1:26-27 as a Case in Point.

  • Bp. Chilstrom’s letter

    Herbert Chilstrom was the first presiding bishop of the ELCA, from its inception until 1995. Here he responds to an open letter from the group Lutheran CORE, which was signed by a number of theological heavyweights (Braaten, Jenson, etc.), opposing the proposed changes to the church’s policy on same-sex relationships.

  • In defense of the ELCA sexuality proposals

    Though the Episcopalians always get more press, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s biennial churchwide assembly later this month will consider recommendations related to the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of non-celibate gay and lesbian Christians.

    The church appointed a “Sexuality Task Force” to study the issue and present recommendations, which it has done. (You can read the report and recommendations, as well as a proposed “social statement” on sexuality here; for the purposes of this post I’m focusing on the report and recommendations.)

    What the Task Force came up with is a series of proposed steps for the church to take, each one to be considered only once the assembly has accepted the preceding one(s):

    Step 1: Asks the assembly whether, in principle, it is committed to finding ways for congregations and synods–if they wish–to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountable “lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”

    Step 2: Asks whether the assembly is committed, in principle, to findings ways for people in such relationships to serve as rostered leaders of the church.

    Step 3: Asks whether, in the implementation of steps 1 and 2, the church is committed to finding ways for members to live together that respect and show love for those with whom they disagree.

    Only if the church agrees to steps 1-3 can it then decide on step 4: to consider “structured flexibility” in allowing people in monogamous, same-gender relationships to be approved for the rosters of the ELCA. This means that individual congregations, bishops, and synods, in consultation with candidacy committees, seminary faculty, and others would be able to exercise what’s come to be called a “local option” in approving and calling non-celibate gay and lesbian candidates (within the context of the pre-existing process for discerning a call to ministry).

    This recommendation is motivated by the lack of consensus in the church and the need to respect the “bound consciences” of those with whom we disagree. Given that consensus doesn’t exist, it’s better to recognize that reality than paper over it. But that also implies that Christians shouldn’t force others to act against their own conscience. Thus the rationale for the local option.

    Arguments against change appeal to the lack of consensus in the ELCA, as well as in the Lutheran World Federation and the wider church. Essentially: “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” The worry here is that the ELCA will be striking out on its own and further separating itself from other Christian bodies. Appeal here is also made to the traditional interpretation of the seven biblical passages that seem to refer to homosexuality* and, in some cases, a variety of natural law reasoning for the normativity of heterosexuality.

    The rub of the issue, as I see it, is whether a church can, in good conscience, tolerate the level of diversity in practice that a local option would logically entail. We should start out by noting that we already tolerate a great deal of moral diversity: on war and peace, on abortion, on economics and politics, etc. The ELCA as it currently exists strives to be a big tent on most issues (there are obviously some positions that are beyond the pale, e.g., violence or discrimination–at least they’re supposed to be). We know that our vocation in the world is to love others as we love ourselves, but we don’t always agree on what this means in concrete situations.

    Second, moral issues are in a sense secondary or derivative of doctrinal ones. Neither the ecumenical creeds nor the Lutheran Confessions prescribe particular positions on current hot-button issues. And such positions can’t always be derived in a straightforward way from doctrinal truths. (Sometimes they can: for instance, the Incarnation implies that all human beings have an ineffacable dignity, which provides the ground for human rights.)

    Third, we should acknowledge that not only is there a diversity of perspectives on “first-order” moral issues, but also on such “second-order” issues like how we reason about morality in the first place and how we interpret scripture. These deep methodological and hermeneutical issues may be even more intractable than the first-order questions themselves.

    These considerations all point to a diversity of practice as a legitimate option for the church. Total agreement is neither possible at this point, nor, perhaps desirable. Allowing for diversity may be the only way for new insights to emerge. Gamaliel’s advice to the Sanhedrin in Acts seems relevant here.

    It might be argued that taking any steps in the direction of affirming same-sex relationships will damage our relations with our ecumenical partners. Wouldn’t this be putting up one more barrier to reunion with Rome, for instance? My personal view is that we shouldn’t let Rome set the rules for ecumenical engagement. From a Lutheran perspective, there’s nothing preventing us from acknowledging now our unity and fellowship with Catholic Christians. As the Augusburg Confession states, it’s enough for the unity of the church to agree on the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments; agreement on “rites and ceremonies” is not a condition for church unity. In this instance, at least, it’s not Lutherans who are standing in the way of unity. Consequently, to concede that affirming same-sex relationships would obstruct unity is already to give the store away as far as what constitutes unity.

    So, it seems to me that the recommendation of the task force, imperfect as it may be, is the best route forward. I like that it makes the affirmation of same-sex relationships foundational, before proceeding to consider specifically clergy-related matters. (Even if a rite for blessing is still a long way off.) It recognizes that we live in the midst of a diversity of opinion that isn’t going away and doesn’t pine for a “pure” church where everyone agrees on all moral issues of importance. Such a church would be a sect. The report gets it right in emphasizing that the ground of our unity is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and God’s gracious acceptance of us sinners for Christ’s sake. Whether we will allow that to be enough remains to be seen.
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    *The report identifies these as Genesis 19:1–11; Judges 19:16–30; Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13; Romans 1:26–27;1 Corinthians 6:9–11; and 1 Timothy 1:9–10.

  • CofE vs. Anglicanism

    Interesting column by Giles Fraser:

    the genius of the Church of England has been to allow different theological temperaments to wor­ship alongside one other, united by common prayer and community spirit. This was how we recognised each other as members of the same Church. This was our particular charism, and we were widely valued for it.

    In Anglicanism, however, the joys of common prayer and community spirit are replaced by ideology. This Anglican Church is a new invention, a global piece of post-colonial hubris, driven by those who feel that a Church that is genuinely Catholic must have outposts throughout the world.

    Bishops get on planes and fly to other parts of the world to sit in com­mittees with other bishops, hammer­ing out policy — although no one in the secular world cares two hoots about what they decide. Over time, these meetings have created a new Church with a single-issue magis­terium based on an unhealthy fascina­tion with what gay people do in their bedrooms. This, apparently, is how we are to recognise each other as Anglicans.

    I try to avoid commenting on the affairs of other churches (though, I guess given the full communion arrangements between TEC and the ELCA I have some stake in it). But the obsession with keeping the “Anglican Communion” together is blowing the importance of an institution–one that I can scarcely remember hearing about just a few years ago–all out of proportion. And actual living, breathing human beings are getting ground under the wheels in the process. I’m not sure what kind of ecclessiology really underwrites this effort to create what looks like an ersatz Catholic Church. Maybe it’s that Anglicans never seem to have made peace with being Protestant (or reformed, if you prefer).

    Hopefully the Lutheran World Federation can maintain its existence as just that: a federation bound together by bonds of affection and sharing in good works. The last thing we need are more top-heavy church bureaucracies.

  • The introversion of the church

    I’m reading Lutheran biblical scholar/theologian Ernst Kasemann’s short book Jesus Means Freedom, and I thought this passage was particularly relevant to a lot of contemporary trends in Christianity, even though the book was published in the late ‘60s:

    The church as the real content of the gospel, its glory the boundless manifestation of the heavenly Lord, sharing in it being identical with sharing in Christ and his dominion, his qualities being communicable to it—we know that message. It has lasted for two thousand years, has fascinated Protestantism, too, and is today the main driving force of the ecumenical movement. If only the theology of the cross were brought in to counterbalance it! But the church triumphant, even if it starts from the cross and guards it as its most precious mystery, has still always stood in a tense relationship to the crucified Lord himself. As long as the tension remained alive in it under violent friction, one could in some degree come to terms with the situation. The greatest danger always arose when the church pushed itself into the foreground so that Christ’s image above it faded into an image of the founder, or the cultic hero, or became an ecclesiastical icon to be put side by side with other icons that were set up from time to time. It was against that danger that the Reformation in fact rose up, not against the secularization of the church, although the two things necessarily went together. Where the world is dominated by the church, and even Christ is integrated in its metaphysical system, the church becomes conversely a religiously transfigured world. Its real Babylonian captivity, however, consists in its making itself the focal point of salvation and the theme of the gospel. The church’s introversion puts it into the sharpest contrast with the crucified Lord who did not seek his own glory and gave himself to the ungodly. (pp. 89-90)

  • First Things and climate denialism

    John Schwenkler with an excellent post taking down First Thing‘s resident climate change denialist, Thomas Sieger Derr.

    I’m not sure if I’ve changed or it has, but I used to really enjoy reading FT and was a faithful subscriber for about ten years. It introduced me to a lot of contemporary theology offered at a level that was still relatively accessible to the layperson. In particular, the essays of its former editor, James Nuechterlein, first exposed me to the notion of evangelical catholicity within Lutheranism, an influence in my ultimately joining the Lutheran church.

    Which makes it all the more dispirting to see the magazine descend (further?) into right-wing hackery. Maybe I’m looking back through rose-colored glasses, but it seems to me that it used to offer more of a diversity of viewpoints, even while being distinctly conservative. It’s not like there’s some logical connection between traditional Christianity and climate change denialism; surely FT could at least find someone with actual scientific credentials to write about this stuff.

  • Wrestling with the Bible

    Via Lynn, a post written from a Jewish perspective on interpreting the Torah/Bible:

    Those of us who study seriously, and those of us who do not reject the plain facts of history, are forced to acknowledge that the Bible as we know it is a complicated amalgamation of texts, edited and organized by imperfect human beings, frequently in the service of imperfect human purposes. It is a huge collection of books, containing a great range of perspectives, a great range of agendas, which frequently contradict one another.

    One response to this is to say that if Torah bears the marks of the hands of human beings, if it cannot be said to be an inerrant divine document, then there is no point at all, and all interpretations are arbitrary. Another is to argue that, contradictions and gruesome horrors aside, the Bible is nonetheless the perfect and infallible word of God. Perhaps those who believe the latter are willing to believe that God is a hypocrite; more likely, they’re willing to turn a blind eye to difficult passages, willing to excuse themselves from the obligation of study, willing to quote passages to others when it’s convenient but not willing to struggle with difficult passages themselves.

    But there is a third response: We can accept that the Torah has been edited and organized by human beings, and is therefore incomplete and imperfect — and we can simultaneously hold that the Torah contains the word of God, and that study can allow us to contemplate and draw closer to God.

    The author disclaims any application of this to Christianity, but I’m inclined to agree with several of her commenters that it’s very relevant.

    Even though it was obviously written over a much shorter period of time, the New Testament contains multiple perspectives on the meaning of Jesus, not all of them obviously compatible. It further says things that seem to contradict some of what we now know (or believe). Add to this the fact that Christians include the “Hebrew Bible” among sacred scripture and you’ve got a big, unwieldy collection of literature bursting with different (though related) takes on who God is and what God is up to.

    I think everyone, whether they admit it or not, has a “canon within the canon” that they use to interpret and prioritize other parts of the Bible. For Luther, the Bible was the manger in which Christ lay, and Christ was the key to understanding scripture. He found the message of God’s grace most forcefully set forth in Romans and the Gospel of John, among other places, and used this as a yardstick of sorts for making discriminations (including his notorious judgment that the Epistle of James was a “letter of straw”). This moves us away from seeing the authority of the Bible in some textual property like innerrancy and toward seeing it as belonging to the message (and, maybe, the fruits this message produces in people’s lives?). There’s obviously a kind of hermeneutic circle here, but not necessarily a vicious one. After all, the Bible as we know it owes its existence to the church, which itself is a creature of the proclamation of the Gospel.

    Personally, the more I read the Bible, the more I rejoice in the different perspectives there. It’s liberating to let go of the impulse to organize it into some architectonic theological structure where every book and passage finds its neatly assigned place. The real Bible (as opposed to the mythical Bible that’s often used as a theological or political bludgeon) is a lot messier and more interesting than that. Recognizing this can allow for an ongoing dialogue or dialectic where different parts of the Bible challenge and provoke us, instead of being absorbed Borg-style into a predigested theology. At the same time, though, the core proclamation of God’s grace and liberation in Jesus can provide assurance that the God we encounter in Scripture is one who is for us and whom we can trust, even in the midst of passages that are baffling, challenging, or even offensive.

  • Salvation as re-creation

    A while back I wrote about Keith Ward’s understanding of how God acts in the world, as explained in his book Divine Action. Later in the book he devotes a chapter to the incarnation and offers an interpretation of the atonement.

    Ward argues that Jesus is properly seen as the enfleshment or embodiment of God’s love in the world: “We could then say that Jesus does not only tell us about God’s love or even act out a living parable for the distinctly existing love of God. Rather, what he enacts is the very love of God itself, as embodied in this human world and for us human beings” (p. 215).

    However, the incarnation isn’t merely a lesson for us about God’s love. Or, as Ward says, “Jesus is not primarily an educator, who comes to bring salvation through knowledge, achieved in meditation and stilling of the individual mind” (p. 221). The human predicament is more radical than that; “liberal” views of the atonement sometimes suggest that we merely need to see or learn what is right in order to do it, reducing Jesus to an example:

    [God] cannot simply forgive us, while we are unable to turn from our sin — that would be to say that it does not really matter; that somehow we can love God while at the same time continuing to hate him! He cannot compel us to love him, without depriving us of the very freedom that has cost so much to give us. He cannot leave us in sin; for then his purpose in creation would be wholly frustrated. (p. 222)

    What Ward suggests instead is that the atonement is God re-creating human nature in the life of Jesus. In his life, obedience, suffering, passion, and death, Jesus re-enacts the drama of human life, but in a way that maintains its complete fidelity to God. He thus overcomes sin and the powers of evil to which we are subject. “He takes human nature through the valley of the shadow of death, and in him alone that nature is not corrupted. He is the one victor over evil; he has experienced the worst it can do, and he has overcome it” (p. 223).

    In Jesus, human nature is made anew, the way God intends for it to be. But how can this help us? Aren’t we still stuck in our sins? Ward contends that Christ can help us because he “has remade human nature in an uncorrupted form” (p. 223), and we can participate in that nature, or have it implanted in us through faith in Christ. As St. Paul puts it, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17).

    The nature that we receive from God is a human nature that has triumphed over evil, that has entered into its heart and remained uncorrupted. It is not that God simply creates a new nature in us when we ask; but that he takes human nature to himself, shows what it truly is and what its destiny is and shows that it cannot be conquered by sin and death. That is the nature he places within us, making us sons by adoption, taken into the life of the Son.

    This view seems to have more affinities with the Eastern Christian emphasis on theosis than certain substitutionary or retributive models of the atonement promulgated in the West, particularly since the Reformation.

    The idea of incarnation and atonement as “new creation” also, it can be argued, fits better with an evolutionary view of the development of human nature. As I’ve argued before, evolution seems to require that we relinquish the supposition that humans existed in a state of perfect righteousness prior to a historical fall. Instead, we might propose that early human beings were immature and undeveloped and that God intended them to develop along a certain path. Instead, however, humanity has taken the wrong road, preferring self-seeking, greed, and violence to altruism, justice and peace. Atonement, then, consists of setting us back on the right road.

    A view very much like this has been developed by George L. Murphy, a physicist and Lutheran pastor, in two interesting articles: “Roads to Paradise and Perdition: Christ, Evolution, and Original Sin” and “Chiasmic Cosmology and Atonement.” Regarding atonement as re-creation, Murphy writes:

    Atonement comes about because God in Christ actually does something to change the status of people who “were dead through the trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1). To be effective, the work of Christ must overcome the nothingness toward which sinful humanity is headed, a nothingness which through its terror of death, guilt, and meaninglessness, it already experiences. If humanity and (as we shall note later) the rest of creation with it, is on the way to nothingness, God must re-create from nothing. Atonement parallels in a precise way the divine creatio ex nihilo.

    One benefit of this view of salvation is that it puts humanity back in its proper place as part of creation. As Lutheran “eco” theologian H. Paul Santmire says:

    The Incarnation of the Word is thus a response to the human condition of alienation from God and rebellion against God, as well as a divine cosmic unfolding intended to move the whole of cosmic history into its final stage. United with the Word made flesh, human creatures are restored to their proper place in the unfolding history of God with the cosmos. Thus united, they are free to live in peace with one another and with all other creatures, according to the imperfect canon’s of creation’s goodness. Now they may live as an exemplary human community, as a city set upon a hill, whose light cannot be hidden. (Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian Theology, p. 60)

    I think this provides one fruitful way for thinking about salvation that avoids some of the pitfalls of both a forensic and merely exemplarist view and has a certain consonance with an evolutionary picture of the world.