Guilt and Grief, and Relief

[This appeared first at The Jagged Word on October 12.]

Troubled Water (2008, streaming on Amazon Prime) is really a brilliantly made film. You know the whole thing is going to collapse and fall apart between Thomas and Agnes, but you don’t know when. That tension builds and builds, even when there is nothing tense happening in a given moment. And the way the story is put together brings even seemingly unimportant events to their true significance.

It’s not that the shift in perspective in the middle of the film is unique, but perhaps it surprised me because (not having heard of the movie before) I simply didn’t expect it. Even though it’s over two hours, the two couples are so entwined and paralleled, focused on Thomas and Agnes, that I never felt the length. One has seemingly overcome her grief; one has seemingly overcome his guilt; but both have been deprived (or deprived themselves) of the opportunity to face head-on the event that connects them.

Until that happens, you can feel the troubled waters begin to stir beneath the surface. The central moment is highlighted by the caretaker asking Thomas to play “some real church music” for children on a field trip—led by Agnes—and he plays “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (!).

The Devil and Father Amorth

[This appeared first at The Jagged Word on September 21.]

This isn’t a great documentary. In some ways (down to the design of the credits and titles) it is simply playing on the success and popularity of The Exorcist—though there’s no pea soup, no unnaturally turning heads, and no priests die. (And my wife thinks William Friedkin sounds like Donald Trump. Narrator: he does.)

So while there are a few and minor interesting things in this film, the questions it raises are more interesting to me. What is it that continues to fascinate about exorcism? Why do people continue to make movies dealing with exorcism? I count at least 25 films focusing on possession or exorcism since 2000 (most of which—to placate my critics—I have never seen). Why so many, and why is this a recurring theme?

Faith Deformed

[This first appeared at The Jagged Word on June 29.]

I knew this was going to happen. I knew that if a movie was hyped over and over, time and again, as being an incredible, profound meditation on faith and doubt, that it was unlikely to be anything of the sort. If someone has left or been scarred by Christianity, or an American Fundamentalist version of it; if someone is quick to say, “I’m spiritual, but not religious”; or if someone is fully convinced that what the Church should do is take up the apocalyptic cause du jour, then that person is the perfect candidate to be over-impressed with Paul Schrader’s First Reformed.

I don’t mean that those aren’t authentic responses to a real emotional and intellectual experience of viewing this film. But if you don’t find yourself resonating with one or more of those categories, you might well wonder if you’ve completely missed the point of the film. Is there an additional scene after the credits? Did I miss the profundity? Am I too stupid to understand the basic elements of serious film and thereby misunderstand Schrader’s intentions? The last two might, of course, be true. But the simpler answer is probably more accurate: It’s an attempt to be profound about religion, faith, and doubt, without actually achieving it.

What Is Article XIV?

[This post is essentially inside baseball for The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, although it certainly has implications for the Church as a whole, since the Book of Concord is a confession for the sake of the Church.]

It is only one sentence in the English translation of the Latin: “Concerning church order they teach that no one should teach publicly in the church or administer the sacraments unless properly called.”¹ In the English translation of the German, it reads: “Concerning church government it is taught that no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper [public] call.”²

The controverted terms today are “no one” (German: niemand; Latin: nemo); “publicly” (German: öffentlich; Latin: publice); and “proper call” [translated “regularly called” by the Triglotta] (German: ordentlichen Beruf; Latin: rite vocatus) (Concordia Triglotta 38-39).

Current controversies in the LCMS seem to revolve primarily around semantics: what does rite vocatus mean? It is often used as shorthand for AC XIV, but no word means anything apart from its context. That fact led to this question: Why did Melanchthon (affirmed by the Confessors) find it necessary to confess just this statement on the public preaching and teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments? None of the notes on the translations of these words clarifies anything for our modern problems and controversies over who should exercise the Office of the Ministry (or, perhaps better: who should be exercised in the Office). For example, with reference to the Kolb/Wengert edition, what does it mean to be called in a “regular manner by a proper public authority”? (See the note on rite vocatus.) Certainly, the Lutheran Church has historically left it an open question what constitutes a “proper public authority,”³ whether secular officials, consistories, bishops, or synods. “Regular” (and rite seems to bear this out) appears to be “simply the way things are done.” If “the way things are done” has changed from the time of the Augsburg Confession, the words rite vocatus, in and of themselves, cannot bear the weight that we try to put upon them.

Since neither the Augsburg Confession nor the other Confessions confess every possible teaching of the Scriptures, the first significant question is: “To whom or at what practice is this statement directed?” In other words: what is being confessed here and for what reason? It is clear that in the case of the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, the statements are presented to the Holy Roman Emperor and they are confessions of practice in the face of Roman accusations that the Evangelicals had departed from historic doctrine and practice, i.e., that the Evangelicals had separated themselves from the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Evangelicals’ defense is always that they had not departed from the true teaching of the Church (meaning that wherever the Church—including the Roman Church—had correctly explicated the Scriptures and had not contravened or made ecclesiastical law beyond what the Scriptures commanded or forbade, the Evangelicals confessed nothing more or less).

Allowed to Disagree

G.K. Chesterton once wrote of George Bernard Shaw, “In some matters the difference between us seems to amount to this: that I very respectfully recognize that he disagrees with me, but he will not even allow me to disagree with him” (“Our Birthday,” G.K.s Weekly, 21st March, 1935; in The G.K. Chesterton Collection on Kindle).

Part of the difference between Lutherans and Reformed on the Sacrament of the Altar seems to amount to this: that while the Lutherans (most of the time) respectfully recognize that the Reformed disagree with us, the Reformed will not allow the Lutherans to disagree with them about the Supper.  This is not a new phenomenon.  All the way back to the earliest disagreements among the different confessions arising from the Reformation, the Lutherans made church fellowship the sine qua non of altar fellowship, and vice-versa.  One necessarily entailed the other, just as it did from the very beginning of the Church of Christ on earth (see Elert, Eucharist and Church Fellowship).  On the other hand, the non-Lutheran Reformed began, at least as early as 1631 at the French Synod of Charenton, to welcome Lutherans to Reformed tables.  Whether it was because sharing mere bread and wine does not require any agreement on what is happening to and for Christians there, or whether it was because the Lord’s Supper didn’t belong to the essential core of the Christian Faith (Zwingli), the Reformed have never understood the Lutheran objection to a shared Supper.  They will not allow the Lutherans to disagree with them.  (Regarding the myriad contradictions that serious Reformed see in Lutheran teaching, see Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand, 105ff.)

Besides the current cultural context, which inevitably reduces and minimizes confessional differences, the Reformed descendants of Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer, et al. find the Lutheran position to be a loveless one.  In the uniform (until recently) and historical Lutheran practice of sharing the communion of the Lord only when confessional unity under the Scriptures is recognized, the Reformed hear only an accusation against them that they are not Christians or not “Christian enough.”  But it is at precisely this point where the Lutherans feel the exasperation of Chesterton when arguing with Shaw: we simply want to recognize the real and substantial gulf between the Lutheran and Reformed positions, and they will not even allow us to disagree with them.  The Lutherans believe that the two positions are as far apart as heaven and earth: the bare fact of whether we eat Christ’s Body and Blood with the bread and wine, or whether we do not, is–quite literally–everything.  This is why, for Lutherans, “all questions of the life and teaching of the church ultimately [lead] to the question of the Lord’s Supper” (Sasse, “Why Hold Fast to the Lutheran Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper?” The Lonely Way, I:453).

Finally, we simply want to be honest, and state that there is an irreconcilable contradiction between those who confess Christ’s Body and Blood eaten and drunk by everyone (even, God forbid, an unbeliever) who communes, and those who say that there is only bread and wine eaten and drunk by some or all.  This is not a difference in how Christ’s Body and Blood are present, but whether they are.  Lutherans have never confessed a particular mode, means, or mechanism of describing Christ’s Presence in the Sacrament (e.g., “consubstantiation”).  But Lutherans have always confessed that His Body and Blood are eaten and drunk by everyone, quite apart from an individual’s faith.  This is what Jesus says, and our horizontal unity around the altar depends on making the same confession about Jesus’ own words.  That is what “confession” means: saying the same thing.  And that is what “communion” means: union-with.  Union with Jesus in His Body and Blood (which is impossible if His Body and Blood are not actually there); and union with the other members of His Body precisely because we all share the same Christ as He gives Himself to us.  This, and nothing else, is the cause of “closed Communion.”  Closed to all who refuse to confess with us the simple words of Jesus, but open to all who receive these words with faith and joy.  We cannot force anyone to accept this confession, but we do ask that those who don’t accept it allow us to respectfully disagree with them.

Timotheos

An Entirely Wrong Scriptural Sermon

C.F.W. Walther gives us some insight into why not every sermon (or song, for that matter) that is built from the Scriptures is a true or orthodox sermon.

That is the litmus test of a proper sermon.  The value of a sermon depends not only on whether every statement in it is taken from the Word of God and on whether it is in agreement with the same but also on whether Law and Gospel have been rightly distinguished.  If the same building materials are provided to two different architects, sometimes one will construct a magnificent building, while the other, using the same materials, will make a mess of it.  Because he is dim-witted, the latter may want to begin with the roof, or place all the windows in one room, or stack layers of stone or brick in such a way that the wall will be crooked.  One house will be out of plumb and such a bungled piece of work that it will collapse, while the other will stand firm and be a habitable and pleasant place to live.  In like manner, two different sermons might contain all the various doctrines–and while the one sermon may be a glorious and precious piece of work, the other may be wrong throughout.  …

This frequently happens when students give sermons. [Walther is giving lectures to seminary students.]  You will hear comforting remarks such as “It is all by grace,” only to be followed by “We must do good works,” which are then followed by statements such as “With our works we cannot gain salvation.”  There is no order to such sermons.  Nobody understands them–least of all the person who needs one of these doctrines most.

C.F.W. Walther, Law and Gospel, 37-38

Extra Stanzas

It is a travesty that so many hymns in Lutheran hymnals end–against the overwhelming testimony of the Scriptures–with stanzas about dying and going to heaven.  So I’m rewriting them.  No doubt improvements can be made, and if you don’t like mine, no big deal; write your own.  Here’s what I’m going to sing, unless you give me something better in the comments!

Lutheran Service Book (LSB) 524 (“How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds”), stanza 7:

And then when I awake in life,
Body and soul unite!
Your good creation put to rights,
And make us whole again.

LSB 563 (“Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness”), alternate stanza 5:

When from the dust of death I rise
To greet my Savior in the skies,
Then on new earth my feet will stand,
I will live still from His good hand.

LSB 609 (“Jesus Sinners Doth Receive”), alternate stanza 7:

Jesus sinners doth receive;
Also I have been forgiven;
And when I this life must leave,
I shall find an open heaven.
But my hope is even more:
Jesus bodies doth restore.

LSB 686 (“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”), alternate stanza 4:

On that day when freed from sinning,
Lay my body in the grave.
But my soul shall cry out louder:
“Lord, how long?” and “Lord, please save!”
But we will not wait forever;
Christ the Life will hear our prayer!
And He will, our dear Lord Jesus,
Come and bring the Day to us.

LSB 702 (“My Faith Looks Up to Thee”), stanza 5:

My faith looks up to Thee,
In Christ, my life I see
Hidden in Him.
And when that life appears,
I’ll see Him as He is,
And at His Word I will
Be made like Him.

LSB 730 (“What Is the World to Me”), stanza 5:

What is the world to me?
When will it cease its groaning?
It longs in labor pains
For Christ and His revealing.
And when true children see
The world made new and free,
It ever shall be so:
Creation is my home. 

LSB 733 (“O God, Our Help in Ages Past”), alternate stanza 6:

And we, when Jesus calls us forth,
From graves as from our beds,
Will wake and live forevermore
Bright, glorious as our Head.

LSB 761 (“Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me”), stanza 5:

I will rest my soul in Thee
While my body lies in dust;
Even so, my hope is this,
On Your Word my faith insists:
That my bones shall not remain
In the ground but live again.

LSB 763 (“When Peace, like a River”), stanza 5:

Because in that day mine own eyes shall see
Creation restored and renewed.
I’ll see Christ my Lord, and my body like His.
In that day, finally, all is well. 

Losing My Religion and Works Righteousness

What are Reformed Baptists?  I don’t know.  People who hold to both the freedom of the will and double predestination?  People who hold to believers’ baptism and TULIP?  Got me.  What I do know is that some of them have it in for Lutherans.  In particular, one Emmitt Tyler II (@titus35_com) has part of his website dedicated to “exposing” what Lutherans “really believe.”  (As if this were something we were trying to hide.  It’s been in the Book of Concord for anyone to read for 500 years.)  He also seems to spend an inordinate amount of time on Twitter playing guessing games comparing Lutherans to Arminians and Roman Catholics.  (Incidentally, I find it ironic that Mr. Tyler claims to be all about pure grace and that it comes solely by faith without works, and yet he attributes salvation finally to something we do: http://www.3qgames.com/do.  He puts “do” in quotation marks, but the three “you musts” puts the lie to that.  If the Gospel has “you must” in it, it ain’t the Gospel.  The contradiction is obvious here: “Your salvation has nothing to do with your good works or your effort to keep the Ten Commandments. You’re saved only by the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. … If you want salvation, hate your sins and turn to Jesus, trusting in Him alone as your Lord, God, and Savior, and you’ll be saved.” )

The central claim seems to be that Lutherans teach that (1) a person can lose salvation because sin hardens the heart against the Holy Spirit; and, therefore, (2) Lutherans believe in works righteousness: i.e., that it is our works that keep us in faith and sustain our salvation.

In spite of the fact that Lutherans have explicitly rejected the idea that our works either begin, continue, sustain, or contribute to faith or salvation, Mr. Tyler has discovered that this is not really true!  Actually, Lutherans believe the opposite of what they say they believe!  And they’ve hidden it under their false talk of  “salvation by grace through faith alone”!  So: have we?  Do we really believe that works are what keep a person saved?

Here’s the evidence that Mr. Tyler has “discovered” in the Book of Concord, what he calls “The Hidden Catechism” (ooohhhh!).

First, Lutherans have always and openly taught that one can lose faith and salvation.  If people didn’t know that, it’s not because we never said it.  I would suggest both David and Judas as two who sinned and hardened their hearts against the Holy Spirit.  One was brought to repentance and faith again; one despaired unto death.  Now I realize that those who hold to double predestination and the unqualified perseverance of the saints are simply going to reply that David was always going to be saved, and Judas was not.  Thus, delving into the hidden will and counsel of God (which apparently has been made known only to them), they claim that if someone appears to “fall away,” they never really were saved in the first place.  That’s a neat way of resolving it without any Scriptural backing whatsoever.  How does one account for David, who was chosen by God to be king, who trusted God’s promises to him, but who then sinned in coveting, adultery, and murder to such an extent that he doesn’t even realize he is sinning until Nathan preaches to him?  Then he repents and believes the promise that God has removed his sin from him.  Don’t worry! all that (unrepentant) sin had no effect on David’s faith or election.  He was always going to be saved.  Show me the Scripture, not your rationalistic philosophy of salvation.

The second point seems to have clear evidence in both the Formula of Concord and the Apology (Defense) of the Augsburg Confession (though I wonder if he read anything but one article in the Solid Declaration).  Tyler quotes the Article on Good Works from the Solid Declaration as evidence that Lutherans believe good works keep you in your salvation.  Paragraph 33 quotes the Apology as commentary on 2 Peter 1:10:

Peter teaches why people should do good works: namely, to confirm our calling, that is, that we may not fall away from our calling by lapsing again into sin.  Do good works, he says, so that you may remain in your heavenly calling, so that you do not fall back into sin and lose the Spirit and his gifts, which you have received, not because of the works which follow from faith, but because of faith itself through Christ.  These works are preserved through faith.  However, faith does not remain in those who lead a sinful life, lose the Holy Spirit, and reject repentance (Kolb/Wengert ed.).

So does that mean that once you have faith, then it is your works which keep you in faith?  Well, if Mr. Tyler had bothered to read on a little further:

On the other hand, this does not mean that faith only lays hold of righteousness and salvation at the beginning and thereafter delegates its function to works, so that from then on they may preserve faith and the righteousness and salvation that have been received. [which is exactly the position that the so-called “crypto-Calvinists” (!) had defended at the Altenburg Colloquy in 1568-69]  On the contrary, so that we may be sure and certain of the promise not only that we receive righteousness and salvation but also that we retain it, Paul attributes to faith not only the access to grace but also the basis for our standing in grace and our “boasting in the glory which is to come (Rom. 5:2).  That is, he attributes everything–the beginning, middle, and end–to faith alone (paragraph 34, Kolb/Wengert).

So what were the confessors saying?  It helps to understand that they were arguing against pseudo-Lutherans who were claiming, on the one hand, that good works are harmful to salvation; and, on the other, that good works are necessary even to salvation.  They were holding (and we should follow them) the entire counsel of the Scriptures against all extremes: the Roman extreme that good works are necessary to complete faith with regard to salvation; the Reformed-leaning extreme that good works preserve and exhibit salvation after one has believed; and the extreme that suggests that faith is so solitary that even evil and unrepentant works can never remove one from faith and salvation.

Therefore, we must begin by diligently condemning and rejecting this false Epicurean [Reformed Baptist] delusion that some dream up, that faith and the righteousness and salvation we have received cannot be lost through any arrogant and intentional sin or evil work but rather that when Christians follow evil lusts without any fear or shame, resist the Holy Spirit, and intentionally proceed to sin against their consciences, they nonetheless at the same time retain faith, God’s grace, righteousness and salvation (paragraph 31, Kolb/Wengert).

There is a single source of the Reformed Baptist confusion: an inability to distinguish between Law and Gospel.  There are a multitude of passages in Paul’s letters that exhort or encourage people not to fall back into sin and death.  (See, e.g., Ephesians 5:1ff.; Galatians 5:16-21; 6:7-10; Colossians 3:5-6; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8).  And what of 1 Timothy 1:19, where Paul says that Hymenaeus and Alexander have “made shipwreck of their faith”?  How could they have faith if they were never among the saved?  How could they “shipwreck” something they never had?  Or 1 Timothy 5:15 where some widows had “already strayed after Satan”?  According to Reformed Baptists, they didn’t really “stray” since they were never “in the fold” to begin with.  Or 1 Timothy 6:10, where some, because of the love of money, have “wandered away from the faith.”  We could find other examples.  But by exhorting Christians in this way not to fall away from the faith, Paul (or the Confessors) do not claim that the opposite is true: that by doing good works, one is preserved in the faith.  The reality is that one is either doing good works from the Spirit and by faith, or one is doing evil, from his own flesh.  There is no neutral position between sin and good works.  Sin is rebellion against God and unrepentant sin is simply unbelief.  Unbelief means no salvation, since salvation is by grace through faith.  Good works flow from faith, and have no other source than the Holy Spirit.  No good works means no Spirit and no faith.

So when the Confessions exhort good works so that one does not fall back into sin, they are simply describing the life of faith lived out in the world, as opposed to the life of the flesh dying in sin.  This is all Law (which does not mean it is bad), and therefore it is not the Gospel which gives salvation.  Because Reformed Baptists seemingly cannot see the distinction between Law (i.e., do good works, because this is what God requires of you) and Gospel (the free gift of righteousness in Jesus because of His death and resurrection), they confuse the exhortation to good works with righteousness before God.  This in spite of the fact that every sentence in Article IV of the Solid Declaration is written against confusing faith with good works.

Finally, the Lutheran position is not worked out in abstraction and speculation.  We begin in the concrete and the physical: from the actual confession of ourselves as sinners and from the hearing of God’s Word in Christ that election to salvation is a free gift given in the flesh and blood of a particular Man.  Reformed Baptists seem to begin from speculation about what God does in His own secret counsel with regard to choosing for either salvation or damnation.  This means that they cannot deal with the actual facts on the ground: some confess Christ as Lord and some of those who previously made such a confession later fall away.  (And some of those who fall away later make the good confession again.)  Instead of observing and seeing the way things are in reality, they have to speculate about an individual’s heart: when someone falls away, she was never really elect.  Where is the Word that says that?  Where does God speak that way?  This is simply human logic dictating what must be or not be in someone’s heart.  It is human rationalizing masquerading as holding to God’s promises about how He will do what He said He would do.  Those promises of God in Christ that are cited in favor of “once saved, always saved” are not promises made in the vacuum of God’s eternal will; they are made to people so that they might believe and be saved.  This is the difference between Reformed and Lutheran doctrines of election: the Reformed hold to election in the abstract, solely in the realm of God’s sovereignty; Lutherans, on the other hand, hold to election as the proclaimed Word of salvation, objectively accomplished once for all on the cross, and directed to individuals in preached Gospel and Baptism.  The Reformed hold that God elects absolutely; Lutherans hold that God elects through His own chosen Means.  They both claim to be unconditionally gracious, but one flows from God’s sovereignty and one flows from the concrete action of God in Christ at particular times and places.

I do not expect that this will convince the Lutheran-obsessed Reformed Baptists, anymore than an apologia would convince a God-obsessed atheist.  But it should be a hint that when every single Lutheran denies works-righteousness and holds for dear life (literally) to the distinction of Law and Gospel, you have misunderstood the teaching (thus, points 1-2 are correct, while 3 is false).  Mr. Tyler, that means you.

Timotheos

Advent 1

“Rejoice, daughter of Zion!  Behold, thy King cometh unto thee!”  Again we hear the glad Advent-message and read how the King of mercy and of truth, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, fulfils the age-old prophecy with His triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and how the rejoicing multitudes welcome HIm as their King with loud acclaim.  “Hosanna,” they cry, that is, “Save now, O Lord!  Send now prosperity!”  And the Lord God did send prosperity.  David’s Son, yet greater Lord, finishes victoriously His divine work of redemption and forever sets His captive and mourning people free from their cruel enemies–Satan, sin, and death.  Now at His saving name every knee must bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  We have also vowed allegiance to Him, our only King and Savior, in life, in death, through all eternity.  But, alas, we must all confess with deep contrition that we have been most neglectful in our homage ever so often.  We need pardon for our sin, more faith, more love, more hope, more devotion in His sacred service.  And now the glad Advent-message tells us that “He comes the broken heart to bind, The bleeding soul to cure, And with the treasures of His grace To enrich the humble poor.”  Should we not sing our glad hosannas to such a faithful and unwearied Savior?”  [F.W. Herzberger, Family Altar, December 1]

[Timotheos]

What is Clericalism?

It seems the ugly Stephanite beast has reared its head in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  From all the letters, blog posts, and Facebook comments in the past six months, you’d think that a cabal of clergy in cope and chasuble had stormed the International Center, thrown out every layperson, abolished voters’ assemblies, and made it a crime for non-clergy to talk about Jesus or even be in His presence.  But now a popular rebellion has arisen from the very roots of the grass [led, oops, by a bunch of clergy] to tear down the clerical elite with their bishops and Article XIVs.

The latest salvo aimed at priestcraft in all its forms comes from a former president (down with bishops!) of the LCMS (which, technically, makes him more bureaucrat than clergy).  Since the moderator is a little slow to approve comments, I post my response here:

President Kieschnick, with all due respect, I think this ought to be retracted. It is unproductive and divisive, especially following a convention that was perhaps the most unified we’ve seen in decades. You smear, by implication, every pastor who wears a clerical collar as wanting to dominate and be served, rather than to serve. I confess that my old sinful flesh would rather be served, but I doubt that temptation comes more easily to one in a collar than it does to one who wears a suit and tie, or jeans and a t-shirt.

Did you speak to any of those pastors in clerical collars? Do you know them? Or are you assuming the worst of them, because this is an easy card to play?

I have seen this “clergy-focused” canard thrown around recently, but I have yet to see any real evidence of it. The fact that seven of the ten Concordias have clergy as presidents doesn’t really tell us anything, nor does the fact that our president and vice-presidents are clergy. What about Boards of Regents? The laity are always represented, according to our bylaws. Voters at Synod conventions are equally divided between clergy and lay, and voters at district conventions are equal, as well (despite recent attempts to increase lay voters at conventions).

But those things are really beside the point, since the one standing out front is, as you say, to be a servant, rather than to lord it over those in his care. Therefore, if you have evidence that those in leadership positions have been lording it over those whom they ought to be serving, you should speak to them, rather than making vague accusations on a blog.

Further, the idea that we might somehow return to a sort of “Herr Pastor” culture in the Missouri Synod is laughable. If, after Stephan, such an LCMS existed, it certainly does not exist now. In what congregation of the Synod could a pastor, abusing his authority in the Gospel, ram his opinions and his way down the throats of his congregation, and not be run out of town on the slickest rail? Pastors don’t even have the authority to implement evangelical, Scriptural practices such as communion every Lord’s day without the fiercest opposition.

For every example of clergy attempting to exercise an unbiblical and unevangelical power, I could give you two of unbiblical and unevangelical lay domineering. But what does that prove, except that we’re all a bunch of damned sinners, pastors and lay alike?

Please don’t increase the unnecessary strife between pastors and people; each member of the Body has his or her own vocation, and it does not help to tear down the pastoral vocation in order to elevate the vocations of the laity.

I went searching for actual examples of clergy dominance, and the Facebook had this to say:  

I don’t know how the first person counts, but from this page, it looks to me like there are 35 lay people to 34 pastors (LCMS career missionaries).  Of the 1-2 year and other short-term missionaries, I highly doubt that they are even primarily clergy.  And if lay people have been removed from serving as missionaries, where is the evidence that it was because they weren’t pastors?  The above are not concrete examples; they are vague insinuations that require hard evidence.  Without such evidence, they just serve to stir up division and distrust between pastors and people.  And where is a degree needed for deacon or lay minister?  The LCMS doesn’t even have uniform language for these positions, let alone required degrees.

Further, cops who don’t wear uniforms don’t want people to know they’re cops.  I doubt that’s what the commenter wanted to say about pastors not wearing collars.  And I categorically deny that there is a special class of person called “theologian.”  Everyone who talks about God is a theologian, whether informed or uninformed, good or bad.  To preserve a class of theologian, above and apart from every Christian, is to denigrate lay people who study the Scriptures and give articulate and well-formed witness to Christ.  Not only that, but I find it hard to understand how a shepherd is supposed to shepherd the flock of God if he is not a theologian.

I don’t know about anyone else, but what I, as a pastor, want more than anything else is a theologically well-educated laity.  No, I don’t mean a seminary education.  I mean knowing the Scriptures and the Confessions, in order that they might do exactly what the above commenters want: to present the Gospel clearly and succinctly to their unbelieving family, friends, and neighbors within their vocations.  I want that.  And guess what?  They don’t have to be pastors to do it!  The cry of “clericalism!” (besides coming, strangely, from clergy) often comes from those who are, in practice, the most hyper-clerical of all.  Because they seem to think that lay people who are living out their vocations as Christians in the world are somehow not enough.  Instead of bearing witness within the places where God has put them, these anti-anti-clericalists want lay people to be “ministers.”  We’ve had this modernization of medieval monasticism feuchted on us for long enough.  (That is, unless you’re engaged in “ministry,” you’re not doing “Christian” work.)  If everyone is a minister, no one is.  And I wonder if that’s not what the end goal is.  There are more than a few people in the LCMS who think that the role/goal of pastors is to “work themselves out of a job.”  In other words, from a false translation of Ephesians 4 (see here, here, and here [as well as another essay by Hamann: “Church and Ministry: An Exegesis of Ephesians 4:1-16,” Lutheran Theological Journal 16:3 (December 1982)] for the technical evidence) has come a false idea of what a pastor is and is for.

A pastor is indeed given to the Church for the equipment of Christ’s saints, but not for the purpose of making them into little ministers.  He equips them for their life in the world (to do what they’ve been given to do) by doing what he’s been given to do: preach, teach, baptize, absolve, and give them Jesus’ Body and Blood.  This has nothing to do with pride, arrogance, or lording it over the flock of God which the pastor has been put there to serve; nor is it even about ability or education (but why would any congregation want a pastor who does not have the aptitude to teach and who can go no further in the Scriptures than the latest English translation combined with his feelings?).  This is simply about an Office, which–Lutherans confess–Jesus Himself has established, for the giving out of the forgiveness of sins.  Can lay people forgive sins?  Absolutely: within their vocations.  Can lay people preach the Gospel (as they clearly do in Acts 8:4)?  Absolutely: within their vocations.  Can lay people baptize?  Absolutely: within their vocations, as emergencies arise.

The whole “clergy-focused” argument is a denial of vocation and a return to what Luther vociferously opposed: the elevating of a certain vocation above all others.  It says to pastors: don’t do your vocation, we want to do it.  It says to lay people: don’t do your vocations, do the pastor’s.  When I as a pastor insist on doing my own vocation, it is exactly the opposite of clericalism: it is the upholding of every vocation as holy in Christ, including the pastor’s.

Is it clericalism to insist that the correct interpretation of the Scriptural Office of the Ministry is found in Articles V and XIV (as well as XXVIII) of the Augsburg Confession?  Then every single pastor in the LCMS and every single congregation of the LCMS is “clergy-focused,” because it is exactly these articles pastors vow to uphold in their ordinations and which congregations uphold in their constitutions.

Is it clericalism to want, as far as possible, the best trained pastors for every congregation in the Synod?  Then what is it to insist on giving congregations (who could otherwise have a fully trained pastor) pastors who don’t know the Biblical languages?

Is it clericalism to ask that our congregations abide by the Confessions they claim to, well, confess, and for them to put lay people who are publicly preaching and administering the Sacraments into the Office which was created by God for that purpose?  How would this deprive them of anything?  In fact, it would assure them that the man who is giving out the gifts of God in Christ is indeed put there to do exactly that.  No further degree necessary (although, again, is learning the Scriptures more deeply a bad thing?), no further cost.  Simply prayer and the laying on of hands to signify that this man is put into the one Office by God.  Instead of making up new terms, such as “licensing,” why not simply do what the Church has always done, and ordain them?  (And what is ordination, but a “license” to preach and teach according to AC XIV?  What’s with the neologisms?)

Is it clericalism to ask that churches that are planted have a man in the Office to do the AC V things?  How does this limit the missionary activity of lay people?

Vocation, vocation, vocation!  If we could get this straight, the struggles over and between pastors and lay people would essentially dry up (except, of course, for the peccator that remains in every pastor and every lay person!).  Pastors, you have a vocation partially outlined by your ordination vows and your Diploma of Vocation(!).  Do it.  If you don’t want to do it, don’t be a pastor.  Laymen, you have a vocation outlined by your relationships and what various people require from you.  Do it.  If you want to be a pastor, go through the process and be put into the Office.  Live your vocation.  It’s holy in Christ.  You don’t have to be a “professional church worker,” or even a non-professional church worker.  God has put the Body together in the way He wants it, and all the parts work together.  Let’s stop tearing down certain parts of the Body to elevate others, and let’s stop implying that certain members of the Body are less important because they’re not “doing ministry.”

Timotheos