ZeroTX said:
ChiRo,
A compromise is exactly how I'm seeing it as well.... The article in the back of The Spirituality of The Cross explains it exactly....
It's almost like a "Best of" between Protestantism and Catholicism...
From Protestantism:
Bible-based, Salvation is a free gift, No "papacy"
From Catholicism:
Traditionally-organized church service, "real presence" communion, infant baptism
That's just a few off the top of my head. I left the book in my truck, or I'd look and give you more, but it seems more "right" than Catholicism to me... I can be a Lutheran, I think. I cannot be a Catholic, and I think I would rather break up with this girl than ever become a Catholic. The papacy goes against everything spiritual that I believe, down to the core. I have a History degree from college, and all I can think about is the horrible people who held the office of the pope, and to whom all Catholics must submit authority. It makes me want to vomit.
BTW, we're attending a Lutheran (LCMS) church this weekend.... I mentioned some questions in my PM to you.
-Michael
This is what I meant by not compromising. We dont see it as a "compromise" but a strong stance on what is true.
Evangelical Catholics & Confessional Evangelicals
The ecumenical polarities of Lutheranism
by Gene Edward Veith
Gene Edward Veith is Professor of Humanities and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Concordia University*Wisconsin. He is the author of eight books-including Postmodern Times, Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature, and Reformation Spirituality: The Religion of George Herbert-and numerous essays on Christianity, culture, and the arts. He is a member of First Immanuel Lutheran Church in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, a congregation of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
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In some places, genuine Lutheranism for all of the Lutheran churches has become hard to find. But, as it always has, the pendulum may be starting to swing in the other direction.
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Introduction
Paradoxy
The Roots of American Lutheranism
Between Separatism & Accommodationism
Lutheran Confessionalism
Anti-Ecumenism
Introduction
Imagine a church that is both evangelical-proclaiming the free forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ-and sacramental, centering its spiritual life in the regenerating waters of baptism and the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion. Imagine further a church that is strongly grounded on Scripture, but yet avoids the solipsism of individual interpretation in favor of a comprehensive, intellectually rigorous and eminently orthodox theological system. Imagine a worship service that features both strong preaching and the historic liturgy. Imagine that this is a historical church with a rich spiritual tradition, but without legalism. Imagine, in short, a church that has some of the best parts of Protestantism and the best parts of Catholicism. Finally, imagine that this church body is not some little made-up sect, but one of the largest bodies of Christians in the world.
Such a church might seem like what many Christians-disaffected by both the vacuity of liberal theology and the shallowness of American evangelicalism-are dreaming of. For millions of Christians such a church actually exists-it goes by the admittedly inadequate name "Lutheran."
Worldwide, there are some 60 million Lutherans on the books, making it the largest Protestant tradition of them all. There are around 9 million Lutherans in the United States, but 5 million in Africa and another 5 million in Asia. Brazil has over a million Lutherans, and it is one of the dominant religions of Papua New Guinea. In the United States, there are about the same number of Missouri Synod Lutherans (2.5 million) as there are Episcopalians.
To be sure, these numbers are uncertain and doubtless inflated, including state churches and those that have all but abandoned their heritage in favor of liberal theology or quasi-evangelicalism. Just as not all Catholics actually believe and practice their Catholicism, the same is true for Lutherans. Nevertheless, this many people consider themselves Lutherans and affirm, in their formal subscriptions, the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament and salvation by grace through faith in the work of Jesus Christ.
Despite its size, the Lutheran Church seems almost unknown in American Christianity. Catholics, Episcopalians, Baptists, charismatics, and Calvinists are well represented in theological debates, opinion polls, and articles in Christian publications, but Lutherans-who have their own distinctive approach to everything from salvation to politics-are often theological wallflowers.
Billy Graham called Lutherans "the sleeping giant." If Lutheranism is the invisible Church, or, to paraphrase what Luther said of God, the Church that hides itself, this is partly its own fault and partly the result of its theological tension with American culture. Nevertheless, Lutheranism has much to offer Christendom as a whole. As a Church body with a thoroughly worked-out theology, which it actually follows, Lutheran denominations have retained their orthodoxy more successfully than most. But more than that, Lutheran theology-and spirituality-is animated by a dynamic polarity in which divisive theological controversies are put into balance and thus resolved.
Paradoxy
The distinctive characteristic of Lutheran theology is its affirmation of paradox. Calvin and Arminius both constructed systematic theologies, explaining away any contrary biblical data in a rationalistic system of belief. Luther developed his theology in Bible commentaries, following the contours of Scripture wherever they led and developing its most profound polarities: law and gospel; Christ as both true God and true Man; the Christian as simultaneously saint and sinner; justification by faith and baptismal regeneration; Holy Communion as the Real Presence of Christ in material bread and wine.
Not only have Lutherans always affirmed both "evangelical" and "Catholic" ideas, their way with paradox also resolves issues that have divided Protestants. Calvinists insist on salvation by grace alone to the extent of double predestination; Arminians insist that everyone, potentially, can be saved, and so stress the utter freedom of the will. Lutherans stress grace above all, that God does literally everything for our salvation, dying on the cross, with his Spirit breaking into our lives through Word and Sacrament, the means of grace. But Jesus died for all, and potentially anyone might be saved. Lutheranism affirms the best of both Calvinism and Arminianism, while avoiding the exclusivity of the one and the potential Pelagianism of the other. Charismatics emphasize the Holy Spirit-so do Lutherans, finding that Spirit not in the vagaries of human emotion but even more tangibly as being genuinely operative in the Word and Sacraments. Lutherans are fundamentalist in their doctrinal rigor, while excluding separatism and legalism. Lutheran cultural theology affirms Two Kingdoms, preventing the secular from swallowing up the sacred, and the sacred from swallowing up the secular. This explains why Lutherans can seem both inwardly focused and free and easy, why they seem conservative yet apolitical, and why they often have beer at their church dinners.
Lutheranism-with its sacramentalism and liturgical worship synthesized with its biblicism and evangelical proclamation-might serve as a bridge between the various factions of Christianity. Of course, it is not that simple.
If Lutheranism represents an "evangelical Catholicism" (a term favored by many confessional Lutherans), its paradoxes mean that it is likewise subject to attack from every side. Evangelicals consider it "too Catholic"-making fun of what they consider its stiff formality, its old-fashioned music, and its ancient liturgy and, more seriously, questioning how Lutherans can say salvation is by faith if they believe in baptismal regeneration and being appalled at the way the pastor says when he gives the absolution that he forgives people their sins. Catholics and Orthodox lump Lutheranism with all other Protestants-in fact, Lutherans are the worst Protestants because they started the dissolution of Christendom.
Within Protestantism, Calvinists attack Lutherans for "not going far enough in the Reformation," for keeping papistical practices and idolatrous worship. Arminians attack Lutherans for not believing in the freedom of the will and for leaving the door open to anti-nomianism. Charismatics think Lutherans are "cold." Fundamentalists say Lutherans are strong on doctrine but weak on morals.
And, just as the Lutheran framework seems to invite attacks from every side, Lutherans counterattack everyone else. Lutherans condemn Arminians for not believing in predestination and Calvinists for believing in double predestination. Catholics and charismatics are considered alike in believing that the Holy Spirit reveals himself in human beings, apart from the Word. Fundamentalists are savaged for their legalism. In fact, many Lutherans do not see themselves as being Protestant at all.
The Lutheran synthesis is a baroque structure that can only be held together by a doctrinal rigor that constantly reinforces every point. Anglicans attempt a via media between Catholicism and Protestantism, which works through compromise, broad consensus, and a tolerance for differences. The Lutheran way, on the other hand, is one of polarities. Each pole of the paradox must be maintained and heightened. What Chesterton said in Orthodoxy of the paradoxes of Christianity is particularly descriptive of Lutheran theology: "We want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning." Christianity does not approach doctrinal issues, such as the nature of Christ or the moral status of a human being, in terms of the Aristotelian golden mean. Rather, "Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious."
Thus, Lutherans are very sacramental and very evangelical. Anglicanism, even in its high-church phase, has always been dismissed by continental Lutherans as merely another variety of Reformed Calvinism, its articles being so wishy-washy in not clearly affirming the Real Presence. Evangelicals are not evangelical enough, falling as they do into the trap of "decision theology" and moralism, not trusting God to accomplish literally everything that is needful.
As a result, Lutheran theology, though embracing in one sense the whole range of Christian spirituality, is nevertheless an entity unto itself, with its own spiritual disciplines that are quite alien to those of other traditions. Consider, for example, the way Lutheranism opposes the so-called Theology (or rather, spirituality) of Glory-with its pretensions of power, victory, and earthly success-with the Theology of the Cross, in which God reveals himself in weakness, defeat, and failure. Or the Word of God, not merely as a sourcebook of information, but as a sacramental means of grace. Or the way God hides himself in what seems to be his opposite, in the material elements of the Sacraments, in humiliation and defeat, in what seems most secular and nonreligious. Or the exhilaration, under the gospel, of Christian freedom.
I know ChiRho stresses the differences...and theologically they can be considered signficant...but I think Lutherans tend to see the leap as far greater than Catholics who have become Lutheran see it.
