“Believe It and You Have It”

01 Tuesday Sep 2020

Tags

Baptism, Christianity, Faith, Grace, Lutheranism, Martin Luther

If you were to ask Martin Luther, the most famous question in American Evangelicalism, “Are you born again?” He would say, “Of course I am a born-again Christian, I am baptized.” As do many of us to this day. We are Christians, we have always been (as far as we can remember). What is this tosh about born again?

What this is all about is why Lutherans (and I suspect in some ways it applies to all of the older churches), at least those who use the phrase, “One Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church” as we do. we tend to be not wholly Protestant.

That is why there is no revivalism in Lutheranism, or indeed in the Orthodox or Catholic traditions, where we teach baptismal regeneration and practice infant baptism. Let’s look at some differences, shall we?

For Luther, justification isn’t tied to any single event but happens as often as we repent and return to the power of baptism. Justification by faith alone happens in the Catholic context of the Catholic sacrament of penance. Sorry, it’s not a once in a lifetime deal. This doesn’t eliminate choice (one can always refuse to believe).

Luther’s beliefs parallel the Catholic belief in sacramental efficacy, which places salvific power in external things. Without this, we must rely on faith as well, in other words, the fact that I believe.

Luther often says, “Believe it and you have it”, in many variations. This is not because faith earns it or achieves anything, it is simply because God keeps his word.

This is certainly not because of the perception of the mind, this is purely rigorously objective truth, God does not lie. Our certainty is based upon that, not on our faith. In Why Luther Is Not Quite Protestant,¹ Phillip Cary writes.

Whoever believes and is baptized is saved” (Mark 16:16) Luther teaches that the baptismal formula, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” is the word of Christ. Luther is emphatic on this point: the words spoken in the act of baptizing are Christ’s own, so it is Christ who really performs the baptism. Most importantly for the logic of faith, the first-person pronoun in the baptismal formula refers to Christ, so that it is Christ himself who says to me, “I baptize you….” Ministers are merely the mouthpiece for this word of Christ, just as when they say, “This is my body, given for you.”

Making that decision for Christ or a conversion experience actually detracts from, the point about faith alone. We are justified by believing what Christ says is true. In short, God does not lie.

In brief, it is all based on the truthfulness of God, and we (and Luther did as well) like Paul’s saying in Romans 3:4 “Let God be true and every man a liar.”

And that every man includes us. We can put no faith in our own words, not even in our confession of faith. That is one reason for infant baptism, it’s pretty shaky ground to baptize on the basis of a believer’s confession of faith because we never really know what we believe. Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone means that Christians can’t rely on faith. Faith itself doesn’t rely on itself but only Christ’s promise,

This is the well known Lutheran pro me. The emphasis is not on our experience but on what God said. It’s quite unreflective.

More to come in this series, as I get it sorted myself.

¹Pro Ecclesia 14/4 ((Fall 2005)

Reformation Day: Prelude

23 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by Neo in Faith, Lutheranism, Marian devotion, Pope

≈ 72 Comments

Tags

Catholicism, Christianity, Martin Luther, orthodoxy, Reformation 500th Anniversary

We’re coming up on the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation, and like the author of this article, I have many Catholic friends (here and elsewhere). What do I want them to know? In this article from The Federalist, Anna Mussmann does a pretty good job of explaining.

[…]In their eyes, our admiration for Martin Luther is as misguided as holding a big party in honor of one’s divorce. They argue the Reformation ushered in a world where each individual’s personal taste in interpretation became supreme, leading to the moral chaos and postmodernism that riddles the cultural landscape today. At best, they see Protestants as limping along without the spiritual blessings God bestows through their church yet, like anorexics, rejoicing in this near-starvation.

I readily concede that the Reformation brought costs as well as benefits. Yet as a Lutheran, I am profoundly grateful for the sixteenth-century return to Scripture that reminded us of Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, and Solus Christus. I deeply appreciate the Lutheran determination, demonstrated in the “Book of Concord, “to find and cling to biblical truth. That is why I want my Catholic friends to know three things about the event I will be celebrating on October 31.

1. It’s Not about Individualism

Secular historians, like secular journalists writing about Pope Francis, often misunderstand religion. Mainstream history textbooks portray Luther as someone who struck a blow for the individual by rejecting the authority of people who wanted to tell others what to believe. As long as these historians don’t peruse his actual writing, they see Luther as a pretty progressive guy by the standards of 1517. My Catholic friends read this stuff and, quite naturally, pick up the idea that Luther’s teachings led to hyper-individualism.

Yet Luther’s actual theological legacy is not conducive to extreme individualism. He intended to participate in a conversation about reforming errors that were harming the Catholic Church. That is because he wanted to point out where individuals were going wrong by failing to submit themselves to the authority of scripture. […]

It’s true, we are just about as hidebound to what Christians have always believed everywhere as the most traditional Catholic. We don’t do novelty (well some of us do). The Rev Dr Luther was essentially what we would call today a whistleblower. I too have taken Catholic friends to church with me, and especially in the LCMS, they are surprised, if anything we are more liturgical than many Catholic parishes. What Old Luther tried to do was to go back to our roots, in the early church. To be sure there are places we disagree.

The Lutheran Reformation was not about making up new traditions from scratch, but about identifying the parts of the historic liturgy that convey the gospel well. One reason it’s so much fun to talk about philosophy and literature with my Catholic friends is that we share a rich sense of history and see ourselves as taking part in a conversation that has been going on for centuries.

However, we Lutherans disagree with Catholics in a highly significant area. They say church tradition is as reliable a guide as scripture, and that one can safely construct theological dogmas on promises and statements that aren’t found in scripture. Thus they accept concepts like the bodily assumption of Mary as doctrine even though the Bible says nothing on that subject.

Now, Lutherans respect church tradition. The Lutheran reformers frequently referenced the writings of the early church fathers. We, too, are grateful for the history that ties us to the church universal throughout time, and we, too, commemorate the faithful saints who have gone before us (although we don’t ask anyone dead to pray for us—the Bible offers no promise that we will be heard that way).

There is considerably more. Do follow the link above.

I do note that Luther believed in the bodily assumption, but it was something that he took on faith, because, well it isn’t mentioned in scripture. We do, some of us anyway, following Luther’s practice, venerate Our Lady, though.

One of the main points that I always make though is that (so does Anna) without Luther, there is no Trent. He was causal in the reform that the Catholic Church needed badly.

In truth, many Lutherans do as she said, refer to our Reformation as a conservative one, in keeping with the traditional definition, keeping the good and reforming the bad. Some of those that followed had different goals, such as being as not-Catholic as they could be. We (and perhaps the Anglo-Catholics) sit firmly in the middle, Catholic but not Roman, Evangelical but traditional.

Occasionally it’s an uncomfortable spot, as we have neither the Pope nor do we get to make it up as we go. For me, it’s the right spot, as it is for many of us.

Is the Reformation over? Yes and no.

27 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by Neo in Faith, Lutheranism

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Christianity, controversy, Ecumenicalism, Lutheran Church, Martin Luther, orthodoxy, Salvation

Interesting stuff. This is written from an ELCA perspective. The ElCA has ecumenical yearnings to be again in communion with Rome, which I can understand but do not share. Not least because parts of the Lutheran church has done a better job of preserving what we believe than almost anybody else. Still, there’s a lot to learn here, and not just for Lutherans. All of our western churches are seeing similar things. Gene Veith of Cranach did a wonderful job of excerpting Sarah Hinlicky Wilson’s article, so rather than trying to do better, I’ll simply credit him.

. . .There are 4 million Lutherans in otherwise very Hindu India and another 5.7 million Lutherans in otherwise very Muslim Indonesia. There are nearly 20 million Lutherans in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Madagascar combined. Far more modest numbers are found in the Americas, and of course all kinds of Lutherans are spangled across Europe, from the ponderous folk churches of Scandinavia to the tiny but resilient minority churches in Slovakia, Serbia, and Romania.

But it’s another thing to see the global face of Lutheranism in person, and in Wittenberg. Every November since 2009 my German colleague Theodor Dieter and I have taught a two-week seminar titled Studying Luther in Wittenberg, which collects the “diaspora” of Lutheranism for a high-octane fellowship of study. . . .

What we encountered was an enthusiastic reception far beyond anything we’d dared to let ourselves dream. We’ve spent time at the seminar table with an Inuit pastor from Greenland who told us how she has to order a whole year’s supply of communion wine because the ice prevents imports ten months of the year. And with a Senegalese pastor who, as an observant Muslim high schooler, read through a Finnish missionary’s entire library before finally being granted access to the Bible—on the conclusion of which reading, he said to himself, “The Qur’an tells how to save yourself; the Bible tells how God saves you.” And with a third-generation Lutheran pastor from Myanmar who was ecstatic to eat sauerkraut and sausages as well as to talk theology all day. Brazilian scholars laboring to translate Luther’s works into Portuguese and a Taiwanese pastor seeing unflattering parallels between 16th-century Christian practice in Europe and 21st-century Taoist practice in China.

Luther has traveled far indeed, and the farther he goes, the warmer his reception. The Africans and Asians we’ve worked with have found in this late medieval friar’s writings on faith and grace, sin and law, left-hand and right-hand kingdoms the answers to the questions plaguing their churches, their people, and their societies. The western and northern Europeans are generally slower to warm up, a little bored with the theologian who taught the ubiquity of Christ but inadvertently became ubiquitous himself. By the end we could usually bring them around. Still, I postulate a Law of Luther Reception: there is an inverse relationship between Luther’s cultural importance and that culture’s ability to hear him.

Which brings us to the question of Luther reception in our own equally exotic, if all too familiar, United States of America.

via Is the Reformation over? Yes and no. | The Christian Century

One thing she comments on, I think is worthy of note.

And then, right at the moment exotic foreigner Lutherans hit their cultural stride, got their church presidents on the cover of Time, and eagerly started building bigger barns, the winds shifted. Whether aggravated by their own choices or obediently following the way of all mainline Protestants, the growth transmuted into a free fall and has kept on falling ever since.

That is very true for the ELCA, the Episcopal Church, and even the Roman Catholic Church. It is not nearly as true for the LCMS, there has been a decline, a pretty big one, but if one was to look at baptism and confirmation statistics (around 13 in our churches) it has pretty much reflected the birth rate, which peaked around 1960. More here. Incidentally, there is a study floating around that says the UK was happier in 1959 than at any time before or since. Connected? Maybe.

She deals with whether the reformation is over, and with Luther’s aversion to Rabbinic Judaism, although he loved the Old Testament. perhaps more than the New, and with several other things.

Her article is well worth your time.

Heidelberg and Hobbiton: Theology of the Cross in Middle-earth

16 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by Neo in Faith, Lutheranism, Persecution, Tolkien

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Christ, Christian theology, Christianity, First Epistle to the Corinthians, Gospel, Jesus, Jr., Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Protestant Reformation

hobbits-lotr-640wide Jess’ last paragraph Saturday caught my attention when she said this.

“The search for respectability often becomes a search for being accepted by a society whose values are not ours – and as, for example, the development of views on homosexuality shows, what was once not only respectable but mandatory under law, can become the opposite very quickly. Best build on Christ, who is love, and leave society to its ever-changing ways.”

It reminded me of something I had read recently, this

HEIDELBERG AND HOBBITON:

THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS IN MIDDLE-EARTH

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

1 Corinthians 1:27

What does Martin Luther have in common with Frodo, and Samwise? I assure you, it’s more than enjoying the company of friends and family, joyous hospitality, and of course, a good ale.

On April 26^th, 1518 Martin Luther delivered his famous Heidelberg Disputation before the General Chapter of the Augustinian order.

On December 25^th, 3018 (Shire reckoning) four hobbits, two men, one elf, one dwarf, and one wizard left Rivendell to destroy the Ring of Power in the fire of Mt. Doom.

To be sure, these are two different events from two different worlds, one history and the other epic fantasy. Yet, something fundamental to the Christian faith ties both stories together.

[snip]

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (1 Cor 2:1-5)

Like St. Paul, Luther learned to rejoice in weakness rather than boast the confidence of human works. For in our weakness we see the great strength of God displayed in Jesus who though he was strong, yet for our sakes became weak. Jesus entered Jerusalem, not on a conquering warhorse like the Caesars of Rome, but on a humble donkey as a suffering servant. For Luther, the theology of glory and the theology of the cross was as different as death and life, blindness and sight, boasting in man’s glory and boasting in the glory of Christ Crucified for sinners.

Like Luther, Frodo and Samwise were also on a journey. Their departure from Rivendell (and the Shire before) marked the beginning of the long road to Mordor, a journey in which we see the hobbits grow in wisdom and stature before men and elves.

As the story unfolds we see Luther’s Heidelberg theses on display, even before the Fellowship leaves Rivendell. Gimli’s axe cannot destroy the One Ring. And Boromir’s desire to wield it against the dark lord, Sauron is foolish and ruinous. Tolkien’s point is clear. The brute strength of dwarfs and the stout hearts of men are no match for evil. Something smaller and unexpected is needed, a humble hobbit.

“I will take the Ring, Frodo said, “though I do not know the way.”

Here Heidelberg meets Hobbiton. A theology of glory is turned aside by a hobbit, small in stature, and unnoticed by the men of Middle-earth and even Sauron himself. Frodo reveals himself to be a theologian of the cross, choosing to bear the One Ring with all its seething, restless evil, and take it to its destruction at great cost to himself and his companions.

via Heidelberg and Hobbiton: Theology of the Cross in Middle-earth | BLOG | 1517. The Legacy Project

I don’t have much to add to this, except that perhaps we should listen a bit better to Christ. He said it often enough. Here, for example, in Mathew 5, He says:

⁵Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

⁶Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

⁷Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

⁸Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

⁹Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

All Saints Day

01 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Neo in Faith, Lutheranism, Saints, Salvation

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Christian communities, Communion of the Saints, Martin Luther, Protestant Reformation, Smalcald Articles, Veneration of Saints

I think all know that in the west, 1 November is All Saints Day. But like so much, our definitions differ a bit. In the Roman tradition (and the Orthodox, as well) it is rather narrowly defined. As in so much, we Protestants see it a little differently.

I have written about my parents, and how this is one of the times that I especially think about them here, as Jessica also has here. For both of us, it can be a bit troubling because while we think our fathers were good and perhaps Godly men, they decidedly weren’t churchly men. We have also often said here, that our hymnology complements the rest of our theology very well, and so.

That is kind of my point here today, while we have the greatest respect for the formal Saints in the Roman and Orthodox traditions, when the Rev Dr Luther studied the Scriptures he found that, all believers in the Christ are referred to there as saints, and thus the Communion of the Saints consists of us all from the Apostles on through the child baptised this morning, and will continue until he returns to us. Along that line in his commentary on 1st Peter, Luther says this

Thus Scripture calls us holy while we are still living here on earth, if we believe. The papists have taken this name away from us and say: `We should not be holy; only the saints in heaven are holy.’ Therefore we must get the noble name back. You must be holy. But you must be prepared not to think that you are holy of yourself or on the strength of your merit. No, you must be holy because you have the Word of God, because heaven is yours, and because you have become truly pious and holy through Christ. This you must avow if you want to be a Christian (Luther’s Works 30:7).

In his 1531 Galatian commentary he reflects a bit more on the views he previously held.

When I was a monk, I often had a heartfelt wish to see the life and conduct of at least one saintly man. But meanwhile I was imagining the sort of saint who lived in the desert and abstained from food and drink, subsisting on nothing but roots and cold water. I had derived this notion about unnatural saints from the books not only of the sophists but even of the fathers . . . But now that the light of truth is shining, we see with utter clarity that Christ and the apostles designate as saints, not those who lead a celibate life, are abstemious, or who perform other works that give the appearance of brilliance or grandeur, but those who, being called by the Gospel and baptized, believe that they have been sanctified and cleansed by the blood of Christ. Thus whenever Paul writes to Christians, he calls them saints, sons and heirs of God, etc. Therefore saints are all those who believe in Christ, whether men or women, slaves or free (Luther’s Works 27:81-82).

And here you also can see part of his belief that monasticism was a bad thing for the faith. I agree but less strongly. I think that he was affected badly by it because he vowed to join the monastery only because he had been badly frightened by a bolt of lightning and had vowed to St. Anne that he would if he was spared. And it seems to me from his writing that his propensity to slip into depression was greatly increased by the monastery. Also germane is that he found that it tended to lead to classes of Christians, I too have occasionally found it a prideful vocation. He also found that occasionally the veneration of Saints could lead to idolatry, and in fact, he warned us to be careful of this with the Theotokos as well, although he, and many of us still venerate her.

In the Smalcald Articles, on the article “How One is justified before God, and of Good Works,” we find

What I have hitherto and constantly taught concerning this I know not how to change in the least, namely, that by faith, as St. Peter says, we acquire a new and clean heart, and God will and does account us entirely righteous and holy for the sake of Christ, our Mediator. And although sin in the flesh has not yet been altogether removed or become dead, yet He will not punish or remember it . . . but the entire man, both as to his person and his works, is to be called and to be righteous and holy from pure grace and mercy, shed upon us [unfolded] and spread over us in Christ (Smalcald Articles, III.13.1-2).

According to the Confessions, the Christian becomes holy in the same way he becomes righteous: by God’s grace for Christ’s sake through faith. By His grace God reckons the holiness of Jesus Christ to the account of the believer. The holiness of a Christian therefore is not his own holiness, but the holiness of Jesus, won for all on the cross. Our holiness is a gift, given to us for the sake of Jesus who died for us; our holiness is not the result of our merits or good works.

If by His death Jesus Christ has taken away all your sins, then are you not holy? For to be holy means to be without sin. Therefore, when God no longer counts our sin against us, we are holy indeed! This is the way our Confessions proceed.

This holiness of Christ, won for us on the cross, is communicated to us through Word of God and received through faith.

For, thank God, a child seven years old knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd. For the children pray thus: I believe in one holy Christian Church. This holiness does not consist in albs, tonsures, long gowns, and other of their ceremonies devised by them beyond Holy Scripture, but in the Word of God and true faith (Smalcald Articles, III.12.2-3).

In the Large Catechism this same theme, that holiness comes through the Word of God, is further developed.

For the Word of God is the sanctuary above all sanctuaries, yea, the only one which we Christians know and have. For though we had the bones of all the saints or all holy and consecrated garments upon a heap, still that would help us nothing; for all that is a dead thing which can sanctify nobody. But God’s Word is the treasure which sanctifies everything, and by which even all the saints themselves were sanctified. At whatever hour, then, God’s Word is taught, preached, heard, read or meditated upon, there the person, day, and work are sanctified thereby, not because of the external work, but because of the Word, which makes saints of us all. (Large Catechism, Third Commandment, 91)

And so, my fellow saints, in a year that has not been overly kind, in the world, to our little company, with more than one of our members being stricken seriously, let us pray for them to regain their strength, and for the Grace to join those who have gone before us,and are waiting for us.

Reformation Day

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by Neo in Church/State, Faith, Lutheranism

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Catholic Church, Johann Tetzel, Luther, Martin Luther, Protestant Reformation, Reformation Day, Rome, Wittenberg

“I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach…”

This passage, traditionally interpreted as referring to Luther, is commonly the text preached on during Reformation Day services.

Door of the Schlosskirche (castle church) in Wittenberg to which Luther is said to have nailed his 95 Theses on the 31st of October 1517, sparking the Reformation.

Sunday was Reformation day, if you didn’t know it. 497 years ago that the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther posted 95 theses on the door of the Slosskirche, more properly the All Saints Church, in Wittenberg. Rather than me reinventing the wheel here, this is how Wikipedia describes it.

In 1516–17, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and papal commissioner for indulgences, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to raise money to rebuild St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

On 31 October 1517, Martin Luther wrote to Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, protesting against the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his “Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” which came to be known as The 95 Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly “searching, rather than doctrinaire.” Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: “Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?”

Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory [also attested as ‘into heaven’] springs.” He insisted that, since forgiveness was God’s alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.

According to Philipp Melanchthon, writing in 1546, Luther “wrote theses on indulgences and posted them on the church of All Saints on 31 October 1517”, an event now seen as sparking the Protestant Reformation. Some scholars have questioned Melanchthon’s account, since he did not move to Wittenberg until a year later and no contemporaneous evidence exists for Luther’s posting of the theses. Others counter that such evidence is unnecessary because it was the custom at Wittenberg university to advertise a disputation by posting theses on the door of All Saints’ Church, also known as “Castle Church“.

The 95 Theses were quickly translated from Latin into German, printed, and widely copied, making the controversy one of the first in history to be aided by the printing press. Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months throughout Europe.

Luther’s writings circulated widely, reaching France, England, and Italy as early as 1519. Students thronged to Wittenberg to hear Luther speak. He published a short commentary on Galatians and his Work on the Psalms. This early part of Luther’s career was one of his most creative and productive. Three of his best-known works were published in 1520: To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian.

This is, of course, the traditional hymn for the day.

There are a couple of lessons of the Reformation, I’d like to highlight.

First the power of unfettered communication. This has been a year in which we have seen both church and state attempt to curtail our free speech rights, and they have made some inroads but for the most part they have been defeated by an aware part of the population. We need to keep it up.

Second, the Reformation has much to do with how moral our churches are, even, maybe especially, the Roman Catholic Church, which with its Counter-Reformation, addressed almost all of the concerns that Luther posted in his 95 Thesis. I’ve often said that our churches now have a tendency to keep each other honest. When there is only one (of any type organization) it nearly always becomes corrupt. When there are two or more, it seems to reduce that temptation drastically.

Crossposted and updated from Nebraskaenergyobserver, 31 October 2012.

THE TWO GREATEST COMMANDMENTS

18 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by Neo in Homilies, Lutheranism

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Christ, God, Gospel of Matthew, Jesus, Jews, Lord, Martin Luther, Pharisee

This is about fifth of the sermon, if there is interest, I’ll post more of it. My comments are in italics

Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity; Matthew 22:34-46

From a Sermon by Martin Luther; taken from his Church Postil.

1. This Gospel consists of two questions. In the first the lawyer on behalf of the other Pharisees asks Christ: Which is the great commandment in the law? In the second the Lord asks the Pharisees and the lawyer: Whose son is David? These two questions concern every Christian; for he who wishes to be a Christian must thoroughly understand them. First, what the law is, and the purpose it serves; and secondly, who Christ is, and what we may expect from him.

2. Christ explains here to the Pharisees the law, telling them what the sum of the whole law is, so that they are completely silenced both at his speech and his question, and know less than nothing of what the law is and who Christ is. From this it follows, that although unbelief may appear as wisdom and holiness before the world, it is nevertheless folly and unrighteousness before God, especially where the knowledge of the two questions mentioned above is wanting. For he who does not know how he stands before the law, and what he may expect from Christ, surely has not the wisdom of God, no matter how wise and prudent he may pretend to be. Let us therefore consider the first question, namely: What the law is; what it commands and how it is to be spiritually interpreted.

3. When the lawyer asked Christ, which was the great commandment in the law, the Lord said to him: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets.”

4. As if the Lord would say: He who possesses love to God, and love to his neighbour, has all things, and therefore fulfils the law; for the whole law and all the prophets point to these two themes, namely: how God and our neighbour are to be loved.

5. Now one may wish to ask: How can you harmonize this statement, that all things are to be comprehended in these two commandments, since there was given to the Jews circumcision and many other commandments? To answer this, let us see in the first place how Christ explains the law, namely, that it must be kept with the heart. In other words, the law must be spiritually comprehended; for he who does not lay hold of the law with the heart and with the Spirit, will certainly not fulfil it. Therefore the Lord here gives to the lawyer the ground and real substance of the law, and says that these are the greatest commandments, to love God with the heart and our neighbour as ourselves. From this it follows that he, who is not circumcised, who does not fast nor pray, is not doing it from the heart; even though he may perform external acts, he nevertheless does nothing before God, for God looketh on the heart, and not on our acts, I Sam. 16, 7. It will not profit a man at all, no matter what work he may perform, if his heart is not in it.

6. From this arises another question: Since works are of no profit to a man, why then did God give so many commandments to the Jews? To this I answer, these commandments were given to the end that we might become conscious whether we really love God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength, and in addition our neighbour as ourselves; for St. Paul says in Rom. 7, 7 (3, 20), that the law is nothing but a consciousness and a revelation of sin. What would I know of sin, if there were no law to reveal it to me? Here now is the law that saith: Thou shalt love God with thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself. This we fulfil if we do all that the law requires; but we are not doing it. Hence he shows us where we are lacking, and that, while we ought really to do something, we are doing nothing.

7. That the Jews had to practice circumcision was indeed a foolish ceremony, yea, a command offensive to reason, even though it were given by God still today. What service was it to God, to burden his people with this grievous commandment? What good was it to him, or what service to a neighbour? Yea, and it did not profit the Jew, who was circumcised. Why then did God give the command? In order that this commandment and law might show them whether they really loved God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their mind, and whether they did it willingly or not. For if there were a devout heart, it would say: I verily do not know why God gave me circumcision, inasmuch as it does not profit any one, neither God, nor me, nor my neighbour; but since it is well pleasing to God, I will nevertheless do it, even though it be considered a trifling and despised act. Hence, circumcision was an exercise of the commandment, Thou shalt love God with all thy heart.

I want to break down the Great Commandment a bit because something has struck me recently.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” strikes me as straightforward, love God as the One God, with everything you’ve got. Although, as always, we’d be well advised not to make God in our image, and that is easy enough to do. I suspect most of us are guilty of it from time to time.

The problems for us as Christians comes in this part, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself“.

If you love mostly yourself, it’s pretty obvious you’re going to be a selfish son of a gun, and not fit company for man or woman (or even animal). We see this all the time don’t we? Both of these are often considered as the sin of pride.

But we are also commanded to love ourselves as our neighbor. this is a bit murky but, what I see here is that it is wrong to negate ourselves greatly,as well. I wonder if this is the origin of collectivism, the theory that the individual doesn’t matter, only the group.

Food for thought, at any rate.

Lectionaries and Catechesis

20 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by Neo in Anglicanism, Bible, Faith, Homilies, Lutheranism

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Book of Common Prayer, Luther, Lutheran, Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Lutheranism, Martin Luther, Old Testament, Tridentine Mass, Valparaiso University

The Chancel of the Valparaiso University Chapel, including the Christus Rex

Doesn’t seem like a natural pairing does it? But maybe it is. Let’s look around a bit.

One of the things that came out of Vatican II was the vernacular Mass (personally, I think that was overdue but, don’t shoot me yet). Part of that was that the Lectionary was revised after something like a thousand years. The reading from the Old Testament came in after being gone for a very long time. In addition, a three year system was adopted to let each Gospel be taught, St. John being used during Eastertide, and for some fill-in during St. Mark’s year, his Gospel is somewhat shorter, of course.

Why am I, a Lutheran writing about this? There are a couple of reasons, the first is that this echoed around our liturgical churches (we have always paid much attention to what our Catholic brothers and sisters do!) and this was adopted in the Lutheran, Episcopalian, and Methodist churches, and probably others as well. That is why so often, if more than one of us write on the lesson of the day, it is usually the same lesson.

The other reason is that I am basing this off a paper written and delivered as a workshop at the Liturgical Institute, at Valpo this spring. If you don’t happen to know, Valpo is short for Valparaiso University which is affiliated with the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Parenthetically, both of my sisters were Valpo Alumni, and one of them worked for many years in Church Relations at Valpo.

Many years ago, I read somewhere about how a preacher set up his sermons, in my recollection it was a pre-civil war American preacher, although that is unimportant. His design was a five point plan:

Tell ’em what the subject is
Tell ’em what you’re going to tell them
Tell ’em.
Tell ’em what you told them
Tell ’em again what you told them.

That tracks pretty well for me in learning from a lecture. I need repetition in comprehending the spoken word, visual aids do help. But I, like many in my generation, do my best comprehension in reading, and that is still true for me. I doubt I’m the only one.

What does that have to do with the Lectionary? This, the old Catholic form, still used with the Tridentine Mass, now often called an Extraordinary Rite, was based on a one year cycle. (so were the historic Lutheran ones). So instead of hearing the same thing every year, now we get it every four years. One of the problems we all have is that basic Bible literacy is down, in all our churches. How’s that work?

Maybe this: Non multa sed multum. Not many, but much

Funny though, just when we thought it was dead and buried, the old lectionary makes something of a comeback, although many thought it far from perfect. It had deficiencies, of course.

Luther himself once complained that the epistles seemed to have been selected by a lover of works, and that all the good gospel sections in Paul’s writings had been given short shrift. It’s been famously noted that in the old series we never ever heard John 3:16, nor the account of the Prodigal Son.

There are voices, as we here all know that the Tridentine should be the standard again, and there are also those that want to go back to the experiments in the 50s on the Tridentine in the vernacular language.

The Anglicans have a continuing movement to return to earlier versions of The Book of Common Prayer. That version is very nearly a twin of the old Lutheran one.

The Orthodox have a Western Rite that is Liturgy of St. Gregory following the Tridentine mass with Orthodox adaptations, and using the one year lectionary.

And in the Lutheran church, especially the Missouri Synod, we are seeing a small movement to gently revise the one year Lectionary, which the lectionary committee has made fully equal to the three year.

Early in the process the Lectionary Committee said

[…] the decision was made to recover and retain the “historic” lectionary, as used by Luther and subsequent generations of Lutherans and as included in The Lutheran Hymnal.

For these, and perhaps other reasons

We are an historic Church and acknowledge the value of what has been handed down to us.
It is important to recognize the value of repetition. Given the increasing lack of biblical literacy within our society and even within the Church, there may be a need in the future for a one-year lectionary, with its annual repetition of key biblical texts.
The one-year lectionary is unique in that there are a number of older resources that support it, including hymnody, sermons by Luther and others, etc.

The other thing that strikes me, is especially for Lutherans and Anglicans, it ties us back to our historic resources, both spoken, such as Luther’s sermons, but also musical, such as the Bach cantatas, and our great hymns which were written to fit that lectionary. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have this back on the First Sunday of Advent, where it belongs

But I think the greatest part would be if our congregations Biblical literacy could be improved.

More at Weedons Blog: Diachronic vs. Synchronic Unity and Lectionary.

The “Wolf of Wallstreet” and the Orders of Creation.

24 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by Neo in Church/State, Faith

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

church, Epistle to the Romans, family, God, Martin Luther, Simon Schama

Portrait of Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On my blog recently, I wrote about the continuity (and the discontinuity) between the compilation of the Common Law, Magna Charta, and the American Constitution, and how they were written for moral people to work within and with. That post is here, and I see this as a follow-up to it, explaining some basics.

John Adams said that:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Many of us have wondered why, and yes, it is applicable to any people who wish to be free. Here is part of the reason. And it has a lot to do with how God ordered the universe. Dr. Jack Kilcrease recently saw The Wolf of Wallstreet and it made him think A few excerpts may be in order.

In many respects though, I think Scorsese got fundamentally wrong why Jordan Belfort became corrupt and the nature of his corruption….I would of course make a couple of points about this. First, of course, any economic system is corruptible, because humans are by nature corrupt. This is obvious and I need not historically elaborate this. Secondly, there is nevertheless a possibility for Capitalism with virtue (one might say). Certainly the Puritans had a vibrant Capitalist culture while maintaining a relatively high level of morality (at least in human terms). The Dutch did as well. Simon Schama has documented this in his book about the Dutch in the 17th century:http://www.amazon.com/Embarrassment-Riches-Interpretation-Culture-Golden/dp/0006861369/ref=la_B000AQ8WPO_1_17?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390136403&sr=1-17…..Scorsese somehow thinks there needs to be more State-control. Indeed, over the previous 100 years or so, we have developed the notion that the State is really the center of human life. This is a mistake made not only by the Left of the political spectrum, but also by the Right. That being the case, in our current political discourse the State is meant to bear weight that as an Order of Creation that it wasn’t established by God to bear. In other words, the assumption is that human flourishing happens if we get politics right. In fact, not just human flourishing happens but maybe even the Kingdom of God happens- witness the strange messianic projects that both liberal and conservative Presidents have wanted to take up in recent decades.

In fact the State is not and can not be the center of the universe. In his Genesis Commentary, Martin Luther explained this, in this way

In his commentary on the primal narrative of human life before the Fall, Luther shows that God established first the Family and then the Church as the original and most authentic setting of human existence. They were created before the Fall into sin and therefore are not necessarily a response to the condition of human sin. Rather, they are a natural setting for human life on earth. They only become unworkable on their own when sin comes in. Therefore after the Flood, in Genesis 9 God promulgates the new law of retribution, thereby implying the establishment of the Order of the State as Paul confirms in Romans 13. Hence, the State and its coercion are not meant as a means of the fulfillment of human life. It is, unlike the other Orders, something created in order to counteract human sin and therefore make up for the failures of the first two Orders.

In the context of the film, Belfort has no constraints from his home training, he only has the State and the State is neither omnipresent nor omniscient, and so he gets away with a lot. We would say for now but, that is not operative in his worldview, that of an unbeliever.

Within such a situation then, the State must either remain impotent in the face of a corrupt culture where the Orders of the Church and Family are non-functional, or it must actually take over those functions and become more and more intrusive, totalizing, and, indeed, tyrannical. And this latter course more often than not happens. And so there comes about a kind of symbiotic effect. The more the Church and the Family deteriorate as Orders, so the Order of the State takes over their functions. And the State feeds children and supports families because there is no father. The State teaches “virtue” (after a fashion) in public schools. And the State becomes a kind of religion and now brings the kingdom. Nevertheless, it is likewise the case, that as the State takes over these functions and becomes more and more totalizing, it also accelerates the deterioration of the Orders of the Family and the Church as well.

You should read the entire article: theologia crucis: The “Wolf of Wallstreet” and the Orders of Creation.

With a hattip to Cranach: The Blog of Veith as well

And so we see the proper ordering of society is Family, then Church, then State, if we disrupt the order we will have trouble, and we do.

The Devil’s Interval

01 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by Neo in Faith

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

God, Lutheran, Lutheran Worship, Martin Luther

An early printing of Luther’s hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God (Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently I was reflecting on my time in the band, and it always reminds me that music, especially band music, is my family’s second business. To the point that we think one of my ancestors was a bandmaster in the Napoleonic Wars.

Recently Jess has talked about her love of the Mass, and Chalcedon has talked some about his discussion group. I found both eminently relatable.

Like Jess, I love the liturgy, although traditional Lutheran worship is somewhat different than Anglo-Catholic.

And like Chalcedon, I too have run across a fair number of young people who fail to understand that God really is love and wants us to succeed but that if we reject Him he will sadly condemn us.

I wonder if these aren’t a part of what so many of rail about under the term of ‘modernism’. In so many cases it consists of little but very poor or no chatecismal education. I can’t really speak to the others but traditional Lutheran Worship is specifically designed to teach, as well as worship, and when you depart from it, you have to be very careful to keep all the elements there, and in order. It’s a problem, especially in so-called contemporary worship.Too often, Novelty rules, and as we have often said, novelty is not a good word. But you know for many of us it goes even deeper, many of us have said that there have been no good hymns written lately, some say 1940 or so some say since Queen Victoria died, we can always argue about that. But as we have also said, the great hymns are also good theology.

But that isn’t even confined to the lyrics. Consider the music, itself.

The key of C is composed of C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C which is pretty straightforward and is, in fact, all white keys on the piano.But it is not symmetrical, C, D, E are whole steps but a half step to F, and then full steps to G, A, B and then a further half step to C. That a very common key, indeed, and is quite uplifting in it’s feeling.

Now, let’s start with middle C, you would play C, D, E, F# (G flat), G# (A flat), A# (B flat), then C again. This is a tri-tone scale based on six note in equal intervals, rather than seven notes found in the major scale.

Now play C and F# sharp together. This is what is known as the augmented 4th or flatted 5th. How does that make you feel? Now play C and F# over and over alternating at 1 second intervals. This is the opening riff from Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze. Black Sabbath was quite fond of it as well. Keep playing it. Has Old Scratch come to visit yet? Well that could be overstating the case a bit.

But that is called “The Devil’s Interval”. There are reports that it was banned by the clergy in the middle ages. I don’t know if that is true, but it has been used by many classical composers to instill a feeling of evil or dread. Including Martin Luther.

In A Mighty Fortress is Our God the third line of the first verse reads: “For still our ancient foe, doth seek to work us woe.” The third line of the third verse reads: “The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him. ” The two lines where Luther refers to the Devil in the text of the hymn, also happens to be when the “devil’s interval” is found in the melody line. Just a coincidence? Or genius?

Here, listen for yourself.