Its Time: LCMS Unity and Mission

You may have seen this floating around the net, but, if not, I'm posting it here.

Matt Harrison has been and is a great and needed voice in the LC-MS. He has courageously, yet temperately, addressed the issues that face our Synod. Like the great unifiers before him, Melanchthon and Chemnitz, Harrison is a leisetreter, one who treads lightly, not given to polemics, rhetoric, or party spirit. The longer we avoid addressing these issues the worse our situation will become. Rather than moving full steam ahead with various programs and initiatives, we need to stop a reassess our situation and determine "who we are" and what we are about.

Its Time: LCMS Unity and Mission

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What Is the Point of Religion?

I meant to write a original post today, but never got around to it. So...I'm stealing a post from Cruising Down the Coast of the High Barbaree called What is the Point of Religion. I'll let the Fearsome Pirate do most of the talking, but I thought there was a strong parallel between this post and what J.P. Koehler talks about. Mainly I mean when Koehler emphasizes that when anything replaces the clear testimony of the gospel and when we recieve our motivations from the flesh rather than the gospel, this unfaillingly leads to death and stagnation in the church.

Here is the post:

The Newman post was not an isolated incident. For the last month or two, I have been thinking fairly continuously about the ruin of religion, more specifically the Christian religion, and what causes it. By "ruin," I don't mean "death." I mean that steep decline from cultural institution to niche, from a church of generations to a church of white heads, from a church of conversion to a church of self-preservation.

My own assesment of the sharp decline of Christianity under Islam is something I've mentioned before and something many people disagree with. When I first learned of it, my first question was, "Why could the martyr church thrive under and eventually topple pagan Rome, but could not under the sultans and caliphs?" Some people argue that the Muslims were simply much more effective persecutors than the Romans. But I saw an active element that was not present in the 1st century--bishops with social and political responsibility and the accumulation of priceless assets and artifacts. Part of the problem, in my opinion, was that the bishops and other key players forgot what the point of this religion is, thinking instead that social order and the protection of shrines and artifacts is the point.

I think whenever you see a church stumble and collapse, you will that some misdirected vision has already broken its knees. The Church is in the business of preaching the Gospel to all nations. There are things that come along for the ride, things that may or may not get connected to that, but those things are not the point. For example, a church may be a haven for immigrants of a certain nation, but if that church starts to believe and act like it exists primarily as a preserver of ethnic identity, it's just a matter of time before a significant collapse. The same goes when a church decides its fundamental business is in high culture, respectable academia, social reform, or glitzy entertainment.

In modern American Lutheranism, many "confessional" Lutherans have made the quest for internal purity, whether doctrinal or liturgical, the chief business of the Church. Judging by the vigorous missional activity of the early LCMS side-by-side with its doctrinal rigor, the early LCMS saw doctrine as serving Gospel proclamation and the making of disciples. But when you get to the 1970s and beyond, doctrinal purity is made an end in itself, breeding a culture of suspicion that is exemplified in orthodox policemen rapidly and aggressively shutting down missional activity whenever they hold the reins of power. And like anyone who has completely lost focus, the claim that the new center of the Church is indeed the Gospel itself. Doctrinal purity is the Gospel. Liturgical rules are the Gospel. The hierarchy is the Gospel. Church growth is the Gospel. Ancient religious culture is the Gospel.

If any of them read the above paragraph, they will tar me as one of those "mission over doctrine" folks. Quite the opposite--doctrine serves mission. But what I see among confessional Lutherans, what I saw at seminary, is more along the lines of "doctrine equals mission," or among folks more enchanted with dress-making, "liturgy equals mission." As a fellow student once sneered, "We have the Divine Service every Sunday. How much more missional can you get?"

The business of the Church is preaching Christ to all nations, teaching his words and commandments, baptizing, and making disciples. You can't cut out the "all nations" and "making disciples," as Lutherans are wont to do. You can't eliminate that part about teaching Christ's words, as liberals and post-Vatican II Catholics tend to do (I am not saying that the teaching of Rome prior to Newman was the same as Christ's--but at least it claimed to be). I think you will find that replacing that basic commission with something else is at the root of the decline of many churches throughout the ages.

Are Our Best Days Behind Us?

Matt Harrison has created the best LC-MS blog around. If you have not stopped by, I highly encourage that you do. He is always posting things from the early days of the synod (translating them on a drop of a hat it seems). This post from him: Are Our Best Days Behind Us? Schwan 1865, is a great self assesment that we should always be asking as a synod. This is Harrison's introduction:

"H.C. Schwan was president of the LCMS Central District in 1865. As the Synod was approaching its twentieth anniversary, he honestly asked the question: Are our best days behind us? Schwan aludes to Luther's comment that he gospel is like a "passing rain shower," which does not return where it has passed. All five of the German born presidents of the Synod knew this passage of Luther, and all used it as a call to repentance for their day. Lord have mercy upon us. Matt H"

Make sure to stop by his blog and read what H.C. Schwan has to say.

Lutheran Quote of the Day: Gesetzlich Wesen Unter Uns - "Legalism Among Us"

Probably more than any other theologian, John Philipp Koehler has influenced me the most. His approach to theology and his keen insight into human behavior is astonishing. Gesetzlich Wesen Unter Uns, "Legalism Among Us," is a great example of his thought. Not only has he had a big influence on my own thought, he is also timeless in his observations. His intimate awareness of man's opinio legis, man's law bent mind, is always applicable, for there is nothing new under the sun. Though written in 1914 his words speak directly to what is going on (in many camps) in the LC-MS today. These words from another essay from Koehler seem especially applicable in our situation:

"Every kind of society, church groups included, is seized by the hurrah phenomenon and as such it becomes apparent generally at a time when a certain goal is to be reached quickly by a drive with external blatant means. All this hurrah business has certain traits which make it evident in arising out of the flesh; they are: 1) It appeals to the natural brutal sense in man, indicating that those who make use of it are willing to accommodate external brute force. 2) In a rousing attack, force is applied to accomplish with the might that which quiet, sustaining and thorough work cannot be relied on to produce. 3) Mass agitation is the object and the individual must be swept along by force with the crowd, because there is no confidence in the spontaneous decision of the individual personality. 4) The promoter, by noisy conduct, attracts attention to his own person. 5) Thus he would put himself across together with his concepts and aims, yet indeed not by an inward conviction of his fellow men but by the use of external means. 6) By so doing, love toward neighbor is forgotten, while selfishness, disaffection and malice have an open field. 7) Finally, hurrah sentiment always has the nature of clever fabrication. Headlines there are, true enough, and slogans that would give the impression of genuine value. Yet it does not carry the imprint of something which grew out of the unencumbered understanding of intelligent men of character and blossomed forth into an overwhelming truth...Now, sanctification, our actual Christian business, doesn't agree with that sort of thing. When once it becomes apparent that sanctification is in every point the direct opposite of hurrah sentiment, then every Christian ought to see for himself that we must avoid this general ruling spirit of the time."

J.P. Koehler was a highly original theologian. He was the prime formulator of what would become known as the "Wauwatosa Gospel." In part, this approach was a critique on the blind dogmatical acceptance that was going on in American Lutheran theology, especially in the Missouri Synod. He believed that "dogma" was not something one just blindly accepted because it was taught to him, rather, it is something that every theologian has to struggle through himself. Rather than blindly accepting what someone else says, Koehler encouraged students to figure it out for themselves, to go back to Scripture and the sources to make it "their own" theology. When this is not done, theology becomes merely a dead orthodoxy rather than a living and vital proclamation of the truths of Scripture. Koehler's mind was very unique and intuitive. He studied under C.F.W. Walther and Georg Stoeckhardt. From them he took back to Wisconsin a love for the practical and living theology of law and gospel from Walther, and a love for and an urgency to return to the Bible through exegetical theology from Stoeckhardt. Koehler drew on his vast and eccentric loves and knowledge for his thought, he was a very talented historian and exegetical theologian, he was also a very talented musician, artist, and architect. He was the designer of St. Johannes Lutheran Church in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Also, according to musicologist Walter E. Buszin, Koehler was the first American musicologist to edit professionally published Reformation and Baroque music like Perlen alter Kirchenmusik (1905) and Das Gemeindelied (1911).

Unfortunately much of the fruit of Koehler's work, and the implications that his work probably would have had in American Lutheranism were stifled when in 1930 he was dismissed from the Wisconsin Synod due mostly to the political and personal strife and controversy he spent his career writing against. He never really, personally speaking, recovered from this blow.

His essay comes in two installments due to the length. (I don't believe you are able to read the essay from a feed; you must come to the blogspot site in order to read.)

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