Crossing the line

"In the morning when you get up, make the sign of the holy cross and say..." (Small Catechism, Daily Prayers)

Coming from an evangelical background, one of the oddest things to get accustomed to when exploring Lutheranism was the use of the sign of the cross. However, over the past months I've grown to greatly love this "excellent reminder of who we are: baptized children of God who have been redeemed by Christ the crucified" (LCMS FAQ), and now always use it in my own personal devotions.

But at our church, absolutely no-one whatsoever in the congregation makes the sign of the cross during Divine Service. This was something of a surprise for me: it'd taken quite some adjusting to the idea of this "papist" practice before first attending a Lutheran church, and I then had to adjust back to the fact people weren't in fact doing it (exactly the same applies to individual confession and absolution).

It feels rather odd for Divine Service to be the only time during the week when I don't make the sign of the cross during the invocation etc. I have tried doing so on occasion but it feels rather affected to be the only person doing it. I know that "Christians shouldn't even notice whether other Christians do such things" (to quote CS Lewis, as cited in the same FAQ) but I still feel very self-conscious about it, which is the worst of all things to feel in a church service! This is partly insecurity over whether I'm doing it "wrong" (though I do it "Lutheran style", right to left, as described in the FAQ) or at the "wrong time".

So - while I know, deep down, that this is a profoundly silly thread to be starting - I'd be interested to know what the practice is in other people's churches, and whether you think I should just grit my teeth and get on with it.

Romans 8 - "Let's workshop this thing!"

As I mentioned in the comments to an earlier post, for some time I've been trying to get to grips with Romans 8 from a Lutheran perspective, particularly what vv.1-17 have to say about "life in the Spirit".

In Reformed and evangelical circles, the assumption seems to be that "walking in the Spirit" - synonymous with "[living] according to the Spirit" (v.5) and "[setting] the mind on the Spirit" (v.6) - means living in obedience to "the law of the Spirit of life", in other words a form of law-keeping, but a law-keeping that we are now enabled to perform, since we have the Spirit.

For example, a Moore College (i.e. Sydney Diocese) correspondence course on Romans refers to "the indwelling presence and power of the Spirit in the believer's life" and the need to "conduct your life under the Spirit's direction and control" and to engage in "a ruthless rejection of all those practices we know to be sinful". It quotes John Stott as saying, "[to live according to the Spirit] is a question of our preoccupations, the ambitions which compel us and the interests which engross us; how we spend our time, money and energy; what we give ourselves up to."

But I wonder if this is correct. Looking at the verbs Paul uses, it is clear that this is all "a done deal". In other words, Gospel, not Law. "There is now no condemnation ... the law of the Spirit of Christ has set you free ... For God has done ... if Christ is in you ... the Spirit is life because of righteousness ..." etc.

So my (tentative) interpretation of the key phrases relating to "life in the Spirit" in this chapter is:

1. Paul is using the word "law" ironically when he writes of "the law of the Spirit of life". Note how "the law of sin and death" in v.2 becomes just "the law" in v.3. "The law of the Spirit of life" is that which "has set you free", which means that "there is therefore now no condemnation". It describes the process by which God has condemned sin in His Son (v.3) so that "the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us" (note the passive voice there) by Christ's fulfilment of the law on our behalf. In a word, "the law of the Spirit of life" is the Gospel of justification by faith on account of Christ.

2. To "walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit" is thus to believe the promises of the Gospel (see Galatians 3:2). Ditto to "set [one's] mind on the things of the Spirit". In the context of Romans, walking "according to the flesh" encompasses not only outright wickedness, but also attempts to achieve justification by one's own works.

3. We "put to death the deeds of the body" by the Spirit primarily by believing the promise that they are put to death on account of Christ and in our Baptism (see Romans 6:1ff.). It is about the daily contrition and repentance by which the Old Adam in us is drowned, not about gritting our teeth and trying harder to obey some "spiritual law".

However, as mentioned above, I'd welcome any refinements/corrections to this summary, which has been prepared in full consultation with all the Lutheran commentaries on Romans that I possess (i.e. none - and no, not even that one). The Hebrews 12 workshop will then follow in due course...

Justification by Faith: Metatheology for Metalutherans

Does anyone have any thoughts on the Pontificator's recent post(s) on justification by faith as a "hermeneutical rule" rather than a doctrine in the conventional sense?

The basic idea is that justification by faith is not so much concerned with the content of the Gospel, as with the type of discourse the Gospel is. The Gospel is promise-discourse, which makes unconditional declarations of a "Because ... therefore ..." nature, in contrast to the Law, with its conditional statements ("If ... then ...").

Fr Kimel quotes Robert Jenson as follows:

This dogma ["justification by faith alone, without works of law"] is not a particular proposed content of the church's proclamation, along with other contents. It is rather a metalinguistic stipulation of what kind of talking ... about whatever contents ... can properly be proclamation and word of the church ... It is this metalinguistic character of the proposed ... "justification by faith" dogma that makes it a doctrine by which the church stands or falls. If justification were a content-item of the gospel, along with other content-items, the question of which was most important would always be a matter of silly debate. But the doctrine is instead an attempt to state minimal identifying characteristics of the language-activity we call "gospel."

"In other words," writes Fr Kimel, "justification by faith is hermeneutical instruction to preachers to rightly divide law and gospel." He suggests that this "helps to explain why we hear so little about this rule for the first fifteen hundred years of the Church's history. People can speak a language well without knowing all the grammatical rules that govern that language."

I'm very suspicious indeed of attempts by ecumenists to use this sort of concept as a sort of magic wand for "waving away" the divisions between Rome and Wittenberg on the subject of justification (eg the Joint Declaration). But setting to one side the use of this concept in "ecumenical politics", what do people think of this "metatheological" perspective itself?

(It strikes me that there is a link here with Josh's recent posts on the various Reformation and post-Reformation confessions - particularly the direct, personal language of the Small Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism, which is very consistent with the Gospel as promise-discourse, as contrasted with the flat, propositional, impersonal nature of the Shorter Catechism and other Westminster documents).

Chris W hits the big time!

The Pontificator linked Chris's excellent recent article about Lutheran vs Reformed Christology. That deserves a place on our blogroll - the Pontifications blog is duly added.

The Pontifications post is well worth reading in its own right - Fr Kimel praises Lutheran Christology (including a great quote from Chemnitz's Two Natures), and the post opens with the following corker of a quotation from Luther, which Fr Kimel declares to be "one of [his] favorite quotations of all theological time" and which he likes "to get it into a sermon at least once or twice a year."

"I know of no other God except the one called Jesus Christ."

This is most certainly true.

(Message to Fr Kimel, who at times seems rather more Lutheran than Anglican: "Joooiiiinn uuuusss.... dooon't beee afraaaiiiid...").

[2 October 2006: "Fr Fimel ... seems rather more Lutheran than Anglican" - doesn't that sound a long time ago now?]

The Next Reformation...

...is a phrase that normally gives me a sinking feeling, since it normally seems to be followed by proposals aimed at dismantling the last one.

But I was intrigued by comments made by Hermann "yes, him again" Sasse in his sermon, "Jesus Intercedes for His Church", which I'm in the process of blogging about over on my own blog. Sasse writes:

After 15 centuries the hour came when the depths of [Paul's letters to the Romans and the Galatians'] doctrine of justification were laid bare in the Reformation.

Perhaps something similar may happen with the great texts of the Bible which speak of the divine mystery of the church: [Ephesians, John 17].

Quoting the 19th century Lutheran theologian August Vilmar, he says that if a full understanding of the NT teaching on the church could be reached, then:

...such a new understanding of the Third Article might be as great a turning point in the history of the church as was the new understanding of the Second Article in the Reformation

Stirring stuff. But what do you think? Is there a "Third Article" Reformation yet to come, to compare with the "Second Article" Reformation of the 16th Century? And is it in fact true to say that the 16th century Reformation was confined to the Second Article? And if a Third Article Reformation is still to come, does anyone have any suggestion what form it may take - what its "Romans 1:17" might be? (Difficult, I know, to form a view on that last point this side of some as-yet unknown pastor-theologian's "Tower Experience" on the subject...)

The Vatican and "St Zwingli"

Reading Hermann Sasse's essay, "Sanctorum Communio", I was intrigued by the following comment on Vatican II:

Who can deny that ...a necessary reformation [of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper] often degenerated into an unnecessary revolution? That happened not only in the 16th century, but even in our own age when liturgical knowledge and art have blossomed as never before, as the Second Vatican Council carried out a reform of the Roman Mass, in which no less a man than St Zwingli seems to have served as its godfather.

Can anyone suggest what Dr Sasse meant by this? I'm not sure Zwingli would have been too thrilled by the post-Vatican II eucharistic prayers posted by FDN the other day...

Original posting date: June 2004

Or to put it more briefly...

... the distinction is this.

Who is the minister addressing in the Words of Institution? Is he addressing the congregation, on behalf of Christ? Or is he addressing God, on behalf of himself and the congregation?

To put it another way: if we understand the Supper as a re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary, to whom is it being "re-presented"? To us? Or to God?

Originally posted in June 2004

Sacrifice, or Sacrificial Meal?

Hermann Sasse's essay, "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration", is excellent on the true point of distinction between Lutheranism and Rome.

Sasse argues that the true point of departure is not transubstantiation (firm though the Lutheran rejection of that teaching is, this is merely an argument over the "how" of the Real Presence). Rather, "the antithesis lies at another point ... in the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass". He writes:

"Chemnitz answers the question of whether one may call the Lord's Supper a sacrifice in [a] figurative sense in the affirmative. But a limit is placed on this designation. The moment the Lord's Supper becomes an atoning sacrifice, one has left the ground of the New Testament."

However, elsewhere Sasse does acknowledge that the Sacrament is a sacrificial meal:

One could even say with the Council of Trent, that it is memoria, repraesentatio and application if the further formulations of Trent ... did not give [the latter two terms] yet another meaning that is incompatible with the NT. But that the Lord's Supper is the re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice and the real bestowal of what is gained through this sacrifice is the real teaching of the NT. If one wants to understand it as a sacrificial meal only figuratively, then the sacrifice of Christ on the cross would also have to be understood figuratively"

So the Lord's Supper is truly a sacrificial meal, at which the body and blood of Christ - the same body and blood that were sacrificed for us - are truly present. But if you go on to say that the Supper is an atoning sacrifice is stepping over the line. eg the Roman Canon of the Mass, quoted by Sasse:

"We Your servants, but also Your holy people ... offer to Your illustrious majesty ... a holy victim, an immaculate victim.

(FDN, is that still what is said in the post-Vatican II mass?)

Sasse introduces that quote by saying that "None of the finely worked out theories about the identity of the sacrifice of the Mass with the sacrifice of the Cross ... eliminates the fact that in the Mass man is also making a sacrifice."

The point of distinction is, I suppose, between the Lord's Supper as Christ's action, as He makes Himself present miraculously by His Word through His ministers, and something that is presented as a human work of re-offering Christ to propritiate the Father. It's a sacrificial meal, where we feed upon the Victim of a sacrifice that has happened once for all on a date in history, not a sacrifice, where we offer Him again and again.

The Calvinism to Lutheranism thing

OK, here's my take on why so many Lutherans are "recovering Calvinists".

1. When God in His mercy reveals to you that salvation is His gift from first to last, and does not depend in the slightest on your decision, then (in most of the English-speaking world) Calvinism appears to be the only product on the market. One is prepared to swallow stuff like limited atonement and double predestination because the only alternative appears to be Arminianism.

2. Becoming a Calvinist introduces you to new depths of Christian teaching and tradition. For example, one learns to take the Sacraments far more seriously than is the norm in evangelicalism (eg by reading the Reformed confessions, or writers like Mike Horton and Doug Wilson).

One also learns (on the one hand) that Christianity was not invented in 1960 and (conversely) that if you wish to find a Christian tradition with roots that go back more than 35 years, the RCs and EOs are not the only available options.

But, crucially, having been taught by Calvinism to love the Sacraments and Church history, one then finds that in practice Calvinism can't deliver - because in practice there are very few Reformed churches (at least in the UK) that preserve these aspects of Calvinism.

3. Finally, one discovers that there is a church which still takes the Sacraments seriously and which (moreover) has an "explanation" of them which actually still makes sense half an hour after you read about it. And which has preserved the historic liturgy and a sense of connection with the church in all times and all places, while remaining truly evangelical. And which holds firmly to salvation by grace alone, without feeling the need to draw "logical" conclusions which the Bible not only declines to draw, but actually denies.

And so you end up becoming a Lutheran.

The Forgotten Council?

Interesting background to the Council of Orange from Alister McGrath's book on the Theology of the Cross:

The doctrine of justification had been the subject of considerable debate within the early western church during the course of the Pelagian controversy. In 418 the Council of Carthage undertook a preliminary clarification of the church's teaching on justification in response to this controversy. Its pronouncements were, however, vague at several points which were to prove of significance, and these were revised at what is generally regarded as being the most important council of the early church to deal with the doctrine of justification -- the Second Council of Orange, convened in 529. No other council was convened to discuss the doctrine of justification between that date and 1545, when the Council of Trent assembled to debate that doctrine, among many others. There was thus a period of over a millennium during which the teaching office of the church remained silent on the issue of justification.

This silence serves to further enhance the importance of the pronouncements of Orange II on the matter, as these [Carthage's canons] thus come to represent the definitive teaching of the Christian church on the doctrine of justification during the medieval period, before the Council of Trent was convened.

Recent scholarship has established that no theologian of the Middle Ages ever cites the decisions of Orange II, or shows the slightest awareness of the existence of such decisions. For reasons which we simply do not understand, from the tenth century until the assembly of the council of Trent in 1545, the theologians of the western church appear to be unaware of the existence of such a council, let alone of its importance. The theologians of the Middle Ages were thus obliged to base their teaching on justification on the canons of the Council of Carthage, which were simply incapable of bearing the strain which came to be placed on them.

The increasing precision of the technical terms employed within the theological schools inevitably led to the somewhat loose terms used by the Council of Carthage being interpreted in a manner quite alien to that intended by those who originally employed them.

For reasons such as these, there was considerable confusion within the later medieval church concerning the doctrine of justification. This confusion undoubtedly did much to prepare the way for the Reformation, in that the church was simply not prepared for a major debate on justification, and was unable to respond to Luther's challenge when it finally came. (pp. 11-12)

Originally posted in June 2004

Monotheletism

What I'm a bit confused about is that I thought Monotheletism was a christological heresy, not an anthropological one.

My recollection of the original discussion in the comments to this post on my blog is that Chris J wasn't saying that monotheletism is itself an anthropological heresy, but that the error of monotheletism easily lends itself to the error of saying that a regenerate person has no will of their own (and I dare say this could work in reverse, too).

On reflection, it may be unfair to accuse Calvinism of "hyper-monergism" (though that's not to say that there aren't plenty of Calvinists who might veer in that direction) or of monotheletist tendencies.

Calvinism does not teach that the renewed human will is not a true will. Quite the opposite, as I recall: the Holy Spirit regenerates us, giving us a renewed will. The regenerate person then exercises that will in believing in Christ and is thus justified. The conceptual order (there is no temporal separation between the three) is then regeneration-faith-justification. Faith is only indirectly a gift of God (Eph.2) - the true gift is a regenerate heart, and then a regenerate heart "naturally" exercises faith in Christ.

This contrasts with the Lutheran position, which is - please correct me if I'm wrong, this is the product of profound theological reflection in the shower this morning - more a case of "faith-justification-regeneration" (with, again, this being only a conceptual order, not a temporal one). In other words, God creates faith in us by the Word and Sacraments, and we are then united to Christ, and in Him we are justified and renewed.

Originally posted in June 2004

[Hello to Dave H]

Dave,

Great to have you with us. Some of us are not only ex-Calvinists - if anyone here has never been a Calvinist, please would you make yourself known to the appropriate authorities (i.e. Josh)? - but (if you're counting from admission to the Lord's Table, as I'm guessing you are) have been Lutherans for minus 25 days. Top that :-)

(My wife and I are due for admission into membership on 4 July - I'm trying to think of a witty way to tie that into US Independence Day, but failing. Weirdly, that actually means that our younger son will have been a Lutheran for two weeks longer than us - he's due to be baptized on 20 June!)

Originally posted in June 2004