Worship Wars - A Lutheran Spin

The title sounds old hat, doesn't it.  These wars have been going on for the last three decades with more and more churches throwing in the towel and going contemporary.  Confessional Lutheran churches are not immune to this trend and pastors who stand in the way become vulnerable.

Lutheran Pastor Hans Fiene has a helpful article about this topic.  He writes:

When advocates of historic Lutheran worship argue against the widespread use of contemporary worship, in particular the use of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) in the Divine Service, they often do so using a syllogism that looks something like this:

Major Premise: Music that focuses on the objective work of Christ is beneficial for use in worship, whereas music that focuses on the subjective feelings of Christians is not.

Minor Premise: Most historic Lutheran hymns focus on the objective work of Christ, whereas most CCM songs focus on the subjective feelings of Christians.

Conclusion: Therefore historic Lutheran hymns are beneficial for use in worship, whereas CCM songs are not.

He continues by noting that most critics focus on the minor premise and the conclusion.  They do so by arguing that "there are plenty of bad hymns" and that somehow justifies their preferences.  To read more of Pastor Fiene's comments go here.

It is without question that there are plenty of bad hymns out there (bad theologically and/or bad musically).  The solution isn't to chuck all hymns - it is to retain that which is good and write new ones that are equally good (Part of what our church is doing is going back to the Psalter and getting acquainted with the Psalms themselves and the tunes sung by our spiritual forefathers).    

Marva Dawn's book Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down is a good place to begin studying this topic. There are other works out there too but I've found this one particularly helpful in my ministry.

Federal Vision Theology - The Missing Link?

Not long ago Gene Veith posted something that both surprised me and intrigued me.  The article had to do with whether infants can have faith or not. Veith was commenting on a review of a recent book that explores the scientific evidence for infants being able to exercise faith.  As he introduces the topic he writes this:  

A key Lutheran teaching is that infants can have faith.  This is why Lutherans see no contradiction between infant baptism and justification by faith.  Lutherans see faith not just in terms of intellectual knowledge or conscious volition, but as trust, dependence, and relationship with a Person.  Infants can trust, depend on, and have a relationship with their parents and also with their Heavenly Father.  The faith that begins with baptism then grows and matures, fed by the “milk” of God’s Word, as the child grows into adulthood, and continuing thereafter.  (That faith can also die if it is not nourished, which is why someone can have been baptized as an infant but then reject the faith and become an unbeliever in need of conversion.)

What's curious to me is how Lutherans (according to Veith) understand baptism, justification, and the possible loss of that standing before God.  I've never understood this about Lutheran theology until now.*

The interesting thing about this view is how closely this resembles Federal Vision Theology.  We are told that through baptism people become united to Christ, are welcomed into the covenant community, experience a temporary election, and are now part of the Church (visible and invisible).  All of this can be lost unless one is faithful to "keep the covenant."  

All of this raises a huge question:  Are some in the Reformed camp borrowing theological ideas from confessional Lutherans?  

To read the full Veith article go here

* This point was reinforced by Dr. Carl Trueman of Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) in a course that I am taking on Forerunners to the Reformation (CH 851) at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.  He argues that for Luther a person becomes regenerate through baptism BUT that work is of no lasting benefit unless it is grasped by faith.  

Two Kingdom Theology and the Upcoming Election

Gene Veith linked to an important article this morning that discusses the question about voting for a Mormon as the president of our country.  That article has this headline: Is There Anything Wrong With Voting for a Mormon President?  

One of the contributors to this article, Mollie Ziegler-Hemingway, is a member of the Lutheran Church  Missouri Synod.  She applies two-kingdom theology to the question and turns to Martin Luther for guidance.

I offer this article in the hope that some will begin to see the truth of Two Kingdom Theology and how it can guide God's people as they participate in both the civil realm and the spiritual realm of Christ's Kingdom.


Postcript:  If you'd like a little more of the wit and wisdom of Martin Luther go to the Lutheran Insulter.  

Luther's Forgotten Insight

Dr. Carl Trueman has a helpful piece about the Protestant Reformation and one of its most important aspects.  Drawing from Luther's Heidelberg Disputation Trueman compares and contrasts the theology of glory to the theology of the cross. 

One of the things that is so striking about the current revival of interest in Reformation theology, broadly conceived, is the absence of perhaps the most glorious contribution of Martin Luther to theological discourse: the notion of the theologian of the cross.

At a meeting of the Saxon Chapter of the Augustinian Order in the city of Heidelberg in 1518, a monk called Leonhard Beier presented a series of theses which Luther had prepared, whilst Dr Martin himself presided over the proceedings. The Heidelberg Disputation was to go down in history as the moment when Luther showcased his radical new theology for the first time.

At the heart of this new theology was the notion that God reveals himself under his opposite; or, to express this another way, God achieves his intended purposes by doing the exact opposite of that which humans might expect. The supreme example of this is the cross itself: God triumphs over sin and evil by allowing sin and evil to triumph (apparently) over him. His real strength is demonstrated through apparent weakness. This was the way a theologian of the cross thought about God.

The opposite to this was the theologian of glory. In simple terms, the theologian of glory assumed that there was basic continuity between the way the world is and the way God is: if strength is demonstrated through raw power on earth, then God's strength must be the same, only extended to infinity. To such a theologian, the cross is simply foolishness, a piece of nonsense.

Read the rest here. 

Personally, I am still coming to grips with this distinction as it relates to my personal life, my church, my denomination, and my overall understanding of mission.  I would love to see more of my colleagues do the same. 

The Incarnation and Luther's Theology of the Cross

Here is a great introduction to Lutheran theology which is particularly helpful as we contemplate John 1:14, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."   There are other applications as well but I will leave those for another time.  Enjoy!


Luther's Theology of the Cross

Carl R. Trueman

No one could have expected that the Reformation would be launched by Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses against Indulgences in October 1517. The document itself simply proposed the framework for a university debate. Luther was arguing only for a revision of the practice of indulgences, not its abolition. He was certainly not offering an agenda for widespread theological and ecclesiastical reform.

Indeed, he had already said much more controversial things in his Disputation against Scholastic Theology of September 4, 1517, in which he critiqued the whole way in which medieval theology had been done for centuries. That disputation, however, passed without a murmur. Indeed, humanly speaking, it was only the unique combination of external factors-social, economic, and political-that made the later disputation the spark that lit the Reformation fuse.

The Heidelberg Disputation

Once the fuse had been lit, however, the church made a fatal error: she allowed the Augustinian Order, to which Luther belonged, to deal with the problem as if it were a minor local difficulty. There was to be a meeting of the Order in Heidelberg in April 1518, and Luther was asked to present a series of theses outlining his theology, so that it could be assessed by his brethren. It was here, then, that the relatively bland Ninety-Five Theses gave Luther an important opportunity to articulate the theology that he had expressed in his September Disputation.

The Heidelberg Disputation is significant for two things. First, there was at least one other future Reformation giant present. This was Martin Bucer, the Reformer of Strasbourg, who would end his days as professor of divinity at Cambridge. A man of vast intellect and wide ecumenical vision, Bucer was to have a profound influence on a generation of Reformers, not least John Calvin. And his first taste of Reformation thinking was provided by Luther at Heidelberg in 1517. Yet, while Bucer left the disputation marveling at how Luther had attacked what the church had become, he missed the theological core of what Luther was saying. This is the second point of importance: the theology of the cross.

The Theology of the Cross

Toward the end of the disputation, Luther offered some theses which seem (in typical Luther fashion) nonsensical, or at least obscure:

19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened [Rom. 1:20].

20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.

21. A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.

22. That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.

These statements actually encapsulate the heart of Luther's theology, and a good grasp of what he means by the obscure terms and phrases they contain sheds light not just on the doctrinal content of his theology, but also on the very way that he believed theologians should think. Indeed, he is taking Paul's explosive argument from 1 Corinthians and developing it into a full theological agenda.

At the heart of his argument is his notion that human beings should not speculate about who God is or how he acts in advance of actually seeing whom he has revealed himself to be. Thus, Luther sees God's revelation of himself as axiomatic to all theology. Now, there probably is not a heretic in history who would not agree with that, because all theology presupposes the revelation of God, whether in nature, human reason, culture, or whatever.

Luther, however, had a dramatically restrictive view of revelation. God revealed himself as merciful to humanity in the Incarnation, when he manifested himself in human flesh, and the supreme moment of that revelation was on the cross at Calvary. Indeed, Luther sometimes referred enigmatically to Christ crucified as "God's backside""the point at which God appeared to be the very contradiction of all that one might reasonably have anticipated him to be.

The "theologians of glory," therefore, are those who build their theology in the light of what they expect God to be like-and, surprise, surprise, they make God to look something like themselves. The "theologians of the cross," however, are those who build their theology in the light of God's own revelation of himself in Christ hanging on the cross.

Read the rest Here