A Thinking Reed

Category: Lutheranism

  • Marty and Wright

    One noteworthy fact mentioned in this Nicholas Kristof column on the Obama/Jeremiah Wright brouhaha is that, apparently, noted religious historian and veritable dean of American mainline Lutheranism Martin Marty is a longtime associate of Wright’s:

    Many well-meaning Americans perceive Mr. Wright as fundamentally a hate-monger who preaches antagonism toward whites. But those who know his church say that is an unrecognizable caricature: He is a complex figure and sometimes a reckless speaker, but one of his central messages is not anti-white hostility but black self-reliance.

    “The big thing for Wright is hope,” said Martin Marty, one of America’s foremost theologians, who has known the Rev. Wright for 35 years and attended many of his services. “You hear ‘hope, hope, hope.’ Lots of ordinary people are there, and they’re there not to blast the whites. They’re there to get hope.”

    Professor Marty said that as a white person, he sticks out in the largely black congregation but is always greeted with warmth and hospitality. “It’s not anti-white,” he said. “I don’t know anybody who’s white who walks out of there not feeling affirmed.”

  • Ash Wednesday ruminations

    I managed to make it to church this afternoon for the service of Communion and the Imposition of Ashes. And it occurred to me that the cyclical nature of the liturgical year is a good way of driving home the Lutheran insight that we’re always beginning anew and always utterly dependent on God’s grace. In his explanation of baptism in his Small Catechism Luther writes:

    [Baptism] signifies that the old creature in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily contrition and repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

    Characteristic of the Lutheran love of paradox, this is a fine encapsulation of the insight that we remain throughout our earthly lives sinners and saints at one and the same time (simul justus et peccator). Lutherans have traditionally been more skeptical than some other Christians of the prospects for a linear moral and spiritual progress. And yet, at the same time, we’ve already “arrived” in the sense that there is nothing we can add to what God has already given us. (Compare this to the Buddhist notion that we are at the same time already enlightened and yet woefully unaware of our own Buddha-nature.)

    And if, as Luther says, we have to return to the source of our justification and repent of our sins daily, how much more is it true that at the beginning of Lent we should take stock of where we are and of how far short we fall. But this is also a heartening message if, like me, you find that you often don’t seem to be “progressing” in your spiritual life.

    Without fail, every time I decide I’m going to “get serious” about my faith by forming habits of prayer and spiritual reading, or become “more intentional” about performing regular acts of charity, and other disciplines it’s only a matter of time before things start to fall off. Inevitably life seems to intrude and I just can’t seem to “make time” for these things. Of course, if I was honest I would recognize that the reason I can’t make time for them is because I don’t want to – I prioritize other things in my life.

    But Lent is where we come around, once again, to that time in the Christian year where we’re brought face to face with our failings but also with God’s promise to be merciful and to draw us more fully into the divine life. It’s a potential fresh start every year, just as, for Luther, every day is a potential fresh start as we recall our baptism and try to live into it. At least, I hope that’s right, or else I’m sunk.

  • Lutherans and lay presidency

    The case for it. LutherPunk and Fr. Chris comment.

    I think there are good reasons to have only ordained persons presiding at the Lord’s Supper. However, in extreme cases I don’t see any insuperable theological objection to a lay person doing it. There’s a remark of Luther (perhaps apocryphal) that in emergencies “even” a woman or child could administer the sacrament. The idea that anyone could, in principle, administer sacraments would seem to follow in a fairly straightforward way from the priesthood of all believers. Naturally, what counts as an extreme case is a matter of debate.

  • Praying the Psalms with Luther

    Speaking of spiritual practices, I wanted to mention another little gem I picked up recently. Our Missouri-Synod brethren at Concordia Publishing have put together a little volume called Reading the Psalms with Luther. This consists of the entire Psalter (in the ESV translation) with each psalm prefaced by a short introduction from Luther’s work The Summaries of the Psalms and followed by a concluding prayer that “sums up” the psalm.

    For instance, today I read Psalm 50:

    Psalm 50 is a psalm of instruction that tells us of the true worship of God and true sacrifice in contrast to the false saints. They value their own sacrifices and worship highly, as if God must surely be thankful and indebted to them. God, however, reverses this. He intends for His goodness and help to be so highly esteemed that we will be thankful and indebted to Him.

    Likewise, when the psalm commands that vows be fulfilled, this does not mean absurd self-chosen vows, but those that are commanded in the Ten Commandments, especially in the First and Second–that we praise God, that we trust in Him, call on Him, praise and thank Him as our only God, and the like. Of this, the raving saints and the hypocrites know nothing.

    Mark well the clear words with which the psalm closes. The last verse teaches us that to call upon God in distress and thank Him is true worship, the most pleasing offering, and the right way to salvation.

    1 The Mighty One, God the Lord,
    speaks and summons the earth
    from the rising of the sun to its setting.

    2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
    God shines forth.

    3 Our God comes; he does not keep silence;
    before him is a devouring fire,
    around him a mighty tempest.

    4 He calls to the heavens above
    and to the earth, that he may judge his people:

    5 “Gather to me my faithful ones,
    who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”

    6 The heavens declare his righteousness,
    for God himself is judge! Selah

    7 “Hear, O my people, and I will speak;
    O Israel, I will testify against you.
    I am God, your God.

    8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
    your burnt offerings are continually before me.

    9 I will not accept a bull from your house
    or goats from your folds.

    10 For every beast of the forest is mine,
    the cattle on a thousand hills.

    11 I know all the birds of the hills,
    and all that moves in the field is mine.

    12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
    for the world and its fullness are mine.

    13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls
    or drink the blood of goats?

    14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
    and perform your vows to the Most High,

    15 and call upon me in the day of trouble;
    I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

    16 But to the wicked God says:
    “What right have you to recite my statutes
    or take my covenant on your lips?

    17 For you hate discipline,
    and you cast my words behind you.

    18 If you see a thief, you are pleased with him,
    and you keep company with adulterers.

    19 “You give your mouth free rein for evil,
    and your tongue frames deceit.

    20 You sit and speak against your brother;
    you slander your own mother’s son.

    21 These things you have done, and I have been silent;
    you thought that I was one like yourself.
    But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.

    22 “Mark this, then, you who forget God,
    lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!

    23 The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
    to one who orders his way rightly
    I will show the salvation of God!”

    PRAYER: Lord, our Savior, enlighten our eyes to know all Your mercies, and create in us such hearts that may be truly grateful to You. Forgive us our sins for the sake of the sacrifice of Your Son on the cross. Enlarge our hearts to walk in the way of Your Commandments, and to pay to You the sacred vow made in Holy Baptism. Amen.

    The Psalms as printed are pointed for singing, and there’s a brief introduction to singing the Psalms in the front of the book. It also includes schedules for praying the Psalms both in the Daily Office and for private devotion. This is a handy little book, especially if you want to pray with the Psalms but want a little guidance in doing so as a Christian.

  • Items of interest from the JLE

    From this month’s Journal of Lutheran Ethics:

    First, an article on the neglect of spiritual practices in the ELCA and how, if the church doesn’t offer pathways to intimacy with God, people will seek them elsewhere. I can definitely sympathize with this. As someone who (re)turned to Christian faith as a young(ish) adult I was expecting to be drilled in spiritual practices and other ways of deepening my faith. Alas, most of the ELCA congregations I’ve been associated with have scarcely mentioned, much less inculcated, intentional pracitces of prayer, fasting, spiritual reading and so on.

    That’s one of the reasons I’ll always be grateful for my year attending the Church of the Advent, an Anglo-Catholic parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. I was exposed to a very sacramental form of worship, the daily office, the rosary, and other spiritual practices that I’ve gotten a lot of nourishment from. Maybe as part of our full communion agreement with the Episcopal Church Lutherans will learn to be freer with borrowing form our Episcopal brothers and sisters, who seem to have preserved more of our shared heritage in this area from the undivided Western church.

    Second, a response from the former chaplain of Gustavus Adolphus College to Carl Braaten’s article from a couple of months ago (which I blogged on at some length here). This piece seeks to go beyond natural law and understand marriage, not as something that exists for purposes extrinsic to itself, but as a community that exists for its own sake as a union of two selves. I’m not sure I’d go all the way with this: doesn’t marriage, in Christian perspective, exist at least in part for the upbuilding of the community? But this in no way excludes same-sex couples, who manifestly do contribute to the upbuilding of communities of which they’re a part. If Christian marriage is partly a “school of sanctification,” then it seems to me that a Christian marriage should have an inherently “ecstatic” direction – the partners should be drawn out of themselves and give life to others. And this can have a variety of manifestations, including (but not limited to) the begetting and rearing of children.

  • Paul Zahl’s theology of grace

    Another newish book that I picked up almost on a whim is Paul Zahl’s Grace In Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life. Zahl was until recently dean of Trinity Episcopal Seminary, is a determined low-church evangelical and vocal opponent of revisionist moves on same-sex relationships. Despite some disagreement there, I’d read his Short Systematic Theology (and he means short – it’s less that 100 pages) and was intrigued enough to want to read more.

    I’d describe Zahl as a kind of Episcopal version of Gerhard Forde. He is proudly “long on grace and short on law.” This book is an expostion of Zahl’s theology and its application to daily living that is rigorously grace-centered. He defines grace simply as “one-way love,” the love of God for human beings who have done nothing to deserve it.

    Zahl unabashedly embraces the Law-Gospel hermenuetic in his approach to scripture. The law is the perfect picture of what human life should be, but it is unable to produce the obedience it demands. If anything, its demands incite rebellion. Consequently, the law takes the form of accusation: an accusation we experience in all the pressures and stresses of life as demands press down upon us:

    What the law requires is exactly what men and women need in order to be wise, happy, and secure. But the law cannot pull this off. The problem with the law is not its substance. The problem with the law is its instrumentality. The law is not up to the task it sets for itself. If the law says, “Jump,” I sit. If it says, “Run,” I walk. If it says, “Honor your father and mother,” I move…to Portland. If it say, “Do not covet” (Romans 7:7-8), I spend all day on the Home Shopping Channel. (p. 35)

    Only grace, God’s one-way love, can get us out of this jam. God’s unilateral forgiveness takes away our guilt and anxiety about not being able to measure up. And, as a bonus, grace produces the “fruits” of love that the law couldn’t. “The one-way love of grace is the essence of any lasting transformation that takes place in human experience” (p. 36).

    One of the interesting things Zahl does is attempt to rehabilitate the theory of substitutionary atonement in a way that speaks a graceful word rather than a judgmental one. He has, he says repeatedly, a very low anthropology and a very high soteriology. Human beings are bound, curved in on ourselves, and unable to do anything to release the load of guilt and judgment from our shoulders. Only Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross releases us from this curse:

    The atonement of Christ on the cross is the mechanism by which God’s grace can be offered freely and without condition to strugglers in the battle of life. Grace is not offered by God as a fiat. We all wish that the innocent had not had to die for the guilty. We wish that a different road, a road less traveled in scars, had been taken. But we have been told that this was the necessary way by which God’s law and God’s grace would be resolved. It had to be resolved through a guilt-transfer, making it “possible” — the idea is almost beyond maintaining — for God to give the full scholarship to the candidate least qualified to receive it. (pp. 117-18)

    Not eveyone will be convinced by Zahl’s defense of penal substitution (I’m not sure I was), but it does preserve something that I think other atonement theories often miss. Too often, especially in liberal theology, the atonement is reduced to an example, or a way of life, which deprives it of its once-for-all efficacy that lifts the burden of guilt off the shoulders of poor sinners. Zahl’s surprisingly convincing defense of the un-free will and total depravity are the counterpoint to the all-sufficiency of Christ’s atonement. If the cross of Christ is just one more demand (“Live a life of radical justice and self-sacrifice!”), then it does nothing to free me from my sins and self-will.

    The more original part of Zahl’s book may be his application of the idea of grace to relationships, in family, society and church. One-way love, not law and its threats and demands is the natural “fruit” of our justification. The image of fruits is particularly important in understanding the dynamic here. You don’t get a plant to produce fruit by pulling on its branches. You have to nourish its roots, in this case with the living water of grace.

    In families the theology of grace takes the form of loving acceptance, not heaping demands on each other. Zahl applies this to relationships between spouses, between parents and children, and between siblings. He argues that many of the troubles that plague family life, from resentment, to control, to competition, are outgrowths of a legalistic approach to life together. Paradoxically, he says, the relativization of the nuclear family by Jesus actually constitutes its salvation:

    The end of the absolute claim of the nuclear family, for which grace strictly calls, emancipates the nuclear family from the very nerve of neurosis, which is the projection upon human beings of what belongs only to God. The grace of God releases the possibility of non-demanding love among men and women who are united by human blood. This is the salvation of the famous nuclear family. (p. 186)

    Zahl applies his theology of grace in particularly striking ways to social ethics. Zahl, a student of both Moltmann and Kasemann, jettisons the “two kingdom” ethics identified with traditional Lutheranism and comes to some surprising conclusions for someone identified with the “conservative” wing of Anglicanism:

    “What is grace in relation to war and peace? It is to support no war ever under any conceivable circumstances, and it is peace in all things, the passive peace of Christ-like nonreactivity, bound ot the never-passive operation of the Holy Spirit” (p. 203).

    “Total mercy, complete exoneration, and unconditional release: those are the marks of grace in relation to criminal justice” (p. 211).

    “A theology of grace invites a non-romanticized preferential option for the poor. The picture of this is probably soemthing like a moderate, non-ideological, and non-utopian form of socialism” (p. 217).

    “Just as this theology opposes the use of war in every case, it opposes the construction of malls in every case. One can imagine the construction of a “mall” that buys and sells in a normal and necessary way. One can imagine instances of a market that buys and sells, provides, and distributes. But the mall as we now know it is the “green tree” under which the firstborn of the Canaanites were sacrificed” (p. 222)

    Finally, Zahl addresses grace in church. Here he’s at his most provocative, openly avowing a “low” or even non-existent ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is trouble, both because it is secondary to other more important topics, “such as the saving inherent in the Christian drama” (p. 226) and because it actually does harm to the extent that it “places the human church in some kind of special zone — somehow distinct from real life — that appears to be worthy of special study and attention. The underlying idea is that the church is in a zone that is free, or at least more free, from original sin and total depravity than the rest of the world, but the facts prove otherwise” (p. 226).

    To say we have no ecclesiology is not just a negation. To have no ecclesiology is to have an ecclesiology. What sort of ecclesiology is this? It is a noble one. It puts first things first. It puts Christ over the human church. It puts what Christ taught and said over the church. It puts grace over the church. It puts Christ’s saving work and the acute drama of the human predicament over the church. It puts the human hope of change over the church. It places the Holy Spirit over the church. (p. 227).

    The besetting temptation of the church is to elevate itself as an institution to a place of special prestige or power. In the impressiveness of its historical claims, or the purity of its doctrine, or the beauty of its liturgy it can become deceived into thinking that it’s an end in itself and has its foundation in itself. According to Zahl the church is properly seen as “a pneumatic, Spirit-led movement, always, like mercury in motion. Church is flux. A systematic theology of grace puts church in its right place. Church is at best the caboose to grace. It is its tail. Ecclesiology, on the other hand, makes church into the engine” (p. 228).

    Zahl calls this an “eccleisiology of suspicion,” which denies that there can be any “original sin-free zones” in this world. Those who put their faith in the church rather than God are bound to be bitterly disappointed. “A theology of grace, with its ecclesiology of suspicion, is the tonic and antidote to the church behaving badly” (p. 231). In a time when the church has been behaving badly (on all sides at different points), this strikes me as something that needs to be heard.

    Another noteworthy aspect of this book is that Zahl writes clearly and simply, with an almost whimsical tone. His text is littered with pop cultural references to old sci-fie movies, popular music, and even the plays of Tyler Perry, as well as examples drawn from everyday life. One is forced to wonder why more theologians can’t write like this.

    Despite some disagreements here and there, my overwhelming impression of this book was that Zahl is preaching a theology of grace that is desperately needed in the church and the world. This thirst for grace may be indicated by the fact that the book carries glowing blurbs from Peter J. Gomes of Harvard University and J. Ligon Duncan of the conservative Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Liberals and conservatives have both embraced different forms of “political correctness” — whether that means fealty to the Millenium Development Goals or opposition to gay marriage and abortion — which threaten to overshadow the gospel of God’s forgiving grace. But Zahl argues persuasively that this the only meaningful possibility for genuine human transformation.

  • Jesus vs. marriage

    I had the same thought about the Gospel reading this Sunday that Derek did. I don’t know why it never struck me this way before – maybe it was the translation I was reading/hearing it in. But it sounds for all the world like Jesus is saying that his followers–“those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead”–don’t (shouldn’t?) marry. Although Jesus’ words elsewhere in the NT (not to mention his presence at/wine catering for the wedding at Cana) suggest a more positive view of marriage.

    We’re familiar enough with the idea that Paul seems to give marriage only a grudging thumbs up. I wonder if this represents a wrestling with an earlier more stringent apocalyptic ethic in light of a delayed parousia?

    Lutheranism has usually seen the institutions of the world as ordered toward human flourishing but also as provisional. Marriage would seem then to be part of the kingdom of the left and of the world that is passing away. This seems to me to argue for a more flexible approach to marriage – to being willing to tinker with the institution in light of new experiences. This would be in line with Paul’s seeming pragmatism (“it is better to marry than burn” etc.).

  • Rev. Paul

    Turns out Ron Paul’s older brother David is an ELCA pastor in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And the Paul family originally hails from Pittsburgh. Who knew?

    David Paul is proud of Ron Paul, but he is enough of a realist to understand that his brother’s candidacy is a long shot. Some of his stands—for example, he favors repeal of most federal drug laws—put him on the political fringe. He barely registers in national polls.

    But on the whole, David Paul thinks his brother is on the right side where it counts. “On Iraq, I am in total agreement with him. We shouldn’t have been there. We should get out of there.”

  • The evangelical crack-up: not all it’s cracked up to be

    An honest-to-goodness evangelical pours some cold water on David Kirkpatrick’s NY Times Magazine piece on the splintering of political evangelicalism. (via Jeremy)

    I’ve seen a number of outlets assume that evangelical dissatisfaction with Bush and the GOP must be dissatisfaction from the Left. While younger evangelicals may indeed have a newfound concern for issues like global warming and AIDS, this doesn’t mean they’re becoming liberal per se. And, as the threats of Dobson, et al. to bolt to a third party indicate, much of the dissatisfaction is from the Right.

    David Sessions, the author of the Slate article, makes the interesting suggestion that the growing popularity of Reformed theology in conservative evangelical circles may account for the newfound focus on broader social issues. Neo-Calvinists like Abraham Kuyper were very big on Christ as the Lord of all and that his reign should encompass the entire social sphere. This is in sharp contrast to a kind of Left Behind theology that emphasizes snatching souls out of a society firmly ensconsed in a hell-bound handbasket. In this respect neo-Calvinism has a lot in common with Catholic social thought.

    Lutherans, meanwhile, have historically been more skittish about this kind of thing. Obviously God is sovereign over all, but God relates to us in two ways. The two kingdoms doesn’t refer to distinct spheres of church and state, but to these two ways in which God relates to creation: redemption and conservation. The kingdom of the right, God’s “proper work,” is calling people to faith and repentance through the preaching of the Gospel. The kingdom of the left, meanwhile, refers to the way in which God upholds and conserves the structures of creation and society to provide for and promote human well-being in this life. Politics, for Lutherans, is not redemptive, but pertains to penultimate matters, to serving the neighbor in her concrete needs in this age. To Lutheran ears, the talk of “building God’s kingdom” that you sometimes get from both the evangelical Right and Left smacks of Calvinist-inspired Puritanism.

  • Just in time for Reformation Day!

    My birthday’s coming up (it actually falls on the same day as a certain Reformer’s) and my parents sent me, a little on the early side, a box of goodies including Alister McGrath’s new book Christianity’s Dangerous Idea (thanks, Mom and Dad!).

    Despite the title, which seems to be a jab at Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, the book doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the theism/atheism debate. The subtitle of McGrath’s book is “The Protestant Revolution–A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First,” and the “dangerous idea” in question is described this way:

    The “dangerous idea” lying at the heart of Protestantism is that the interpretation of the Bible is each individual’s right and responsibility. The spread of this principle has resulted in five hundred years of remarkable innovation and adaptability, but it has also created cultural incoherence and social instability. Without any overarching authority to rein in “wayward” thought, opposing sides on controversial issues can only appeal to the Bible—yet the Bible is open to many diverse interpretations. Christianity’s Dangerous Idea is the first book that attempts to define this core element of Protestantism and the religious and cultural dynamic that this dangerous idea unleashed, culminating in the remarkable new developments of the twentieth century.

    So, really, we’re talking about Protestantism‘s dangerous idea. Still, this looks like a fascinating book, and I’m happy to see someone carrying the torch for Protestantism. Not sure when I’ll get around to reading it (it clocks in at over 500 pages), but I’m looking forward to it.