Author Topic: Convocation Third Session Part 1  (Read 3634 times)

Richard Johnson

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Convocation Third Session Part 1
« on: August 25, 2010, 08:33:56 PM »
Wednesday morning began with Matins. The opening hymn was “When morning gilds the skies,” the text Acts 6.1-15, story of selection of the first deacons. Ret. Bp. George Mocko was preaching. Notes from his sermon:

Our situation is akin to the early Christians—need to organize, growing, facing opposition. As then, some of the opponents counseled stringent action, others ignoring the Christians. We need to respond, as Stephen, with the face of an angel. What does that mean?
(1)   Stephen begins with telling the roots—Abraham, Moses, the prophets, the Psalms. We must keep this in focus and proclaim it always. Whatever we do, it is as part of the holy, catholic and apostolic church with the responsibility to proclaim this via Reformation themes (solas). The Word of God remains eternal.
(2)   We do this forthrightly. This can be tough for me, I’m a Slovak, and we are notably a blunt people! It is easy for us to be sharp, accusing, self-righteous, sarcastic, biting, confrontational, and then justify it by saying the prophets used harsh language too—which is to say, we can do all those things unrepentantly.
(3)   We do this with innocence, without guile.

The leadership of the ELCa blew it badly, and continues to blow it badly. They are unrepentant. We are dealing with their mess, and trying to retrieve what we can. As we do it, let us try to do so with the faces of angels—proclaiming our roots, forthrightly, with innocence.

Next the business session, presided over by ret. Bp. Ralph Kempski

Speaker: Stephen Hultgren “The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” (Prof. Theology at Fordham University)

Bob Benne told me my role here is to bring down the median age of the speakers. There are many who say this is a generational issue, but I do not believe this. Matters of truth are timeless. Church struggles perhaps more in some generations than others.

There is a widespread sense that the crisis in the ELCA is a crisis of the authority of Scripture. Most recent evidence was 2009 act on sexuality, but not the only evidence. It’s not just about sex, despite what CORE opponents claim. It is about authority of Scripture.

What the issue is not about:
It is not about fundamentalism or inerrancy. That’s a red herring. Recently in an LQ article an ELCA seminary profession claimed there is a struggle between two views: one of Lutheran orthodoxy, holding to inerrancy; the other that of Luther himself, where a distinction is made between Scripture and the Word of God, so that there is “slippage” between Scripture and the Word of God. I do not agree with this analysis. If debate framed between inerrancy on the one hand and the claimed “more Lutheran hermeneutic” on the other, we haven’t identified the real problem. One can find in Luther, certainly, idea that preached gospel has priority over Scripture; this idea of “slippage” is not without support. But where does the slippage end? And does this concept find support in the Confessions, not just in Luther himself? I don’t think so. But notwithstanding all this, I hear no appeal for a return to the view of Scripture of Lutheran orthodoxy.

What is the debate about that? It is a more traditional Lutheran debate between those who would locate the authority in Scripture itself, and those who locate it in the human community. Does God decide, or do we decide?

Noteworthy that when HSGT discusses the nature of sexuality, not a single Biblical text is cited. The impression is that an a priori decision has been made that texts which mention homosexuality simply do not speak God’s word to the church anymore, and therefore can be ignored.

Another recent statement by an ELCA theologian in a paper written for the Conference of Bishops: “When it comes to establishing authority of Scripture, our primary resource is the communal experience of God’s people over time.” This is utterly astonishing. The authority of scripture depends on the experience of the faithful? We, in the community of faith, are in the driver’s seat in deciding when and where Scripture speaks to us? Recipe for the disaster unfolding before our eyes. Not only must we ask WHO makes the decision, but HOW they make it.

Is there another option besides Lutheran orthodoxy’s approach, and the ELCA fallacy? The question is this: Will the church allow the Scripture to speak to us as God’s Word? Can we find the way between the options of “inerrancy” and “slippage”?

Luther: You’ll hear it claimed that Luther thought the Word of God was not something written, but the proclaimed Word. That Luther’s Christocentric approach—authority of Christ over against Scripture (which lies behind Luther’s antipathy to certain books). Luther’s “How Should Christians Regard Moses.” The alleged “Luther” hermeneutic then suggests that the church is free to dispense with Scripture as the Word of God where it does not seem to us to promote Christ. This is the working view of Scripture among many pastors and theologians in ELCA today. Problem is that this ignores many, many Luther texts where Luther speaks straightforwardly about authority of the written Word. Luther in his later years rejected Copernicus because of his view of the authority Scripture.  My point is not to condemn Luther’s view (we are all convinced Copernicans); but to note that Luther did, indeed, have some view of the authority of Scripture as Word of God. One may maintain that Scripture is God’s Word in a secondary sense, but one must not drive a wedge between the proclaimed and the written word.

Is the authority of Scripture limited to the gospel? The answer must be “no.” All Scripture, for Luther, continued to have authority. For Luther all true Scripture does point to Christ. Ebeling showed that Luther’s hermeneutic transformed medieval exegesis which understood the “spirit” of the text to the intent of the Holy Spirit, the true author of Scripture. Literal and spiritual sense are always united by the Holy Spirit. All of Scripture contains both a grammatical/historical meaning, and it also all points to Christ.

No warrant in Luther to use justification by faith as a scissors to cut anything out of Scripture that is difficult.  Luther regarded ethical teaching of the OT as authoritative. Law of Moses points to Christ, and the Law must be preached to Christians.

The Lutheran Confessions:
(1)   Confessional writings understand themselves to be explications of the church’s articles of faith. Augustana is presented in some ways as an exposition of the Creed.
(2)   Luther’s Christological canon criticism recedes in importance in the Confessions. The hermeneutical center of justification is used differently. Apology, FC, e.g., treat James quite differently from Luther.
(3)   Nowhere do the confessions make a theoretical distinction between Scripture and the Word of God, nor do they question whether Scripture is the Word of God for the church. They place high value on proclaimed word, but it is not set up as a critical lever against the written word. Confessions repeatedly emphasize the importants of the commands of God for the church.
(4)   For the confessions, there can never be a contradiction to justification by faith. They acknowledge that some apostolic admonitions were of passing use for the church, but moral commandments remain binding because they maintain their guiding and sanctifying function. For example, they argue against the idea that worship of God on Sunday is a new “divine law” that replaces the Sabbath; rather, they argue, the NT itself abolishes the Sabbath in its literal sense.

Lutheran Orthodoxy:
(1)   Scripture and Word of God absolutely identified with one another.
(2)   Scripture is self-authenticating. Words give direct knowledge of God, history, etc., without error.
(3)   All Scripture is equally inspired.
Orthodoxy is faulted for a formalistic view of authority, and this is justified. This view does not do justice to the human factor in Scripture, and not capable of handling challenge of the Enlightenment. But there is one very important point for us: confidence of unity of Scripture.

That confidence was lost in rise of critical methodology. Three aspects of Semler’s view:
(1)   Rejected orthodox view of the canon, that these books and none other are divinely inspired.
(2)   Semler saw in Luther a precedent for his own view, critical of the canon.
(3)   Semler saw in Luther’s focus on literal sense of Scripture an opening for the critic: historical investigation to determine the “real” literal sense.

The rise of historical criticism was necessary, in view of the Enlightenment, and there’s no going back, but we must be critical of the critics.

(1)   Semler believe he was being faithful to Luther, but there is a fundamental difference: Semler abandoned Luther’s view of union of letter and spirit. Luther could continue to view OT as Word of God, but for Semler large segments of OT become literature of merely antiquarian interest.
(2)   Unity of canon is broken in Semler. Impossible any longer to conceive of Scripture as a single book of divine authorship for the church.
(3)   Long before Bultmann, Semler had his own program of “demythologization.” Core articles of faith thereby no longer belong to the interpreter’s horizon of reality.

What we get is loss of OT as word of God (along with anti-Semitism, antinomianism); loss of unity of canon.

We must retrieve from pre-critical period this sense of confidence in Scripture—confidence that church, in its decision to canonize these books and not others, was in fact the work of the Holy Spirit. Regain primacy of literal sense, and clear unity between literal and spiritual sense. Problem of fundamentalism is that it reduces the literal to the spiritual, and it is thereby unable to deal with “contradictions” or tensions. Interpreter will seek to understand the literal sense, but never divorce it from the spiritual sense, the sense intended by the Holy Spirit. Exegete must take his/her bearings from the articles of faith of the church.

I am a historical critic, a hard-nosed one. There is something genuinely Lutheran about historical criticism. BUT the question has to be asked about the proper role of such study in the church. The basic point is to illumine the historical reality BEHIND the text, and this serves a useful function when it seeks to explain how a text came to express the theological truth that it expresses. But it overstates its bounds when it seeks to make normative for faith and life a reality different from that which the text itself claims. For example, the way the some scholars have used Greco-Roman sources to undermine what Romans 1 says about homosexuality. Such an argument cannot stand up to the truth. One must go on to ask who is the God that Paul cites, and what does that God mean to say? To understand that, one must look, not to Greco-Roman sources, but to the rest of the canon.

Conclusion: As we look forward to renewal, how do we think about authority?
(1)   Church must take all of Scripture as the word of God for the church. This does not mean fundamentalism, but taking seriously the canonical unity of Scriptural, and to allow the articles of faith to set the correct parameters of interpretation. It also doesn’t mean “inerrancy”—as long as articles of faith are secure, we need not be “bothered” by “contradictions.”
(2)   Church must not be in business of “deciding” what in Scripture is relevant and what is not.
(3)   Lutheranism must be enriched by all churches that view Scriptures authoritatively, to be enriched by theological reflection of other traditions.
(4)   Authority of Scripture will prove itself again today when the church refuses to allow Scripture to be squeezed into the mold of human experience, but will open vision of human life to one not inhibited by narcissim, consumerism, nihilism. The church must give young people today a view of the possibility of life shaped by God’s Word.

[Note: I found Hultgren's presentation to be extremely interesting and helpful. Scott Yakimow, who is here, had a different perspective, so maybe he'll say something about it. Or not.]
The Rev. Richard O. Johnson, STS

Durkin_Park

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Re: Convocation Third Session Part 1
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2010, 11:04:56 PM »
This presentation almost perfectly encapsulates the huge gulf between the ELCA "traditionalists" and Missourians.

Perhaps Hultgren was more nuanced in the presentation, I can't wait to watch the DVD/read the paper, but it sounds like he repeats all the old misinterpretations of Lutheran Orthodoxy passed down from Harnack and others who did not ever give careful study to the period, and which were thoroughly disprove in Robert Preus' two volumes on Lutheran Orthodoxy.

He is totally right that the Enlightenment is huge. This is why Missourians and ELCA traditionalists have such a hard time talking. Missouri isn't interested in merely scaling back on the "slippage", or taking the Enlightenment's truths for granted, or arguing how far to take the Historical critical method and other "methods" and tools that were long ago rejected, long before the Enlightenment ever came around.

"Problem of fundamentalism is that it reduces the literal to the spiritual, and it is thereby unable to deal with “contradictions” or tensions."

If he thinks this describes Lutheran Orthodoxy or Missouri Lutheranism, he has either not read them in depth or misinterpreted them. The Lutheran Orthodox fathers are incredibly aware of allowing scriptural tensions to remain. (They were fighting the rationalistic Calvinists concerning predestination for crying out loud!)

The old line that, "the HCM is a tool, it depends on how you use it," is dreadfully inadequate. I really appreciate when those who claim to use the Historical critical method define precisely what that method is. And then after defining it, defend the assumptions inherent with that method.

My aphorism on the matter: The Christian who finds the HCM useful is usually giving credit to the HCM which truly belongs to the Historical Grammatical Method.

The assumptions inherent in the HCM are what makes the method offensive and incompatible to Christian exegesis. I don't bring this up to derail this excellent reporting and thread, but to point out that until the traditionalists in the ELCA move past lightly dismissing "fundamentalism and Lutheran Orthodoxy" without truly grappling with their arguments, they and Missourians will always seem as coming from different worlds:

"Conservative" ELCAers will say, "Hey get with the program, the Enlightenment is a given, stop dragging your knuckles on the ground and help us find the way out of liberal protestant paganism! You should be our allies and you’re just making all us conservatives look stupid. There must be new directions for American Lutheranism!"

Missourians will say, "Uh...why should we accept your presupposition that we have to change. We aren't sliding into liberal paganism. Sure, we got our problems, who doesn't, but rather why don't YOU question YOUR Enlightenment presuppositions. The problem with Lutheran Orthodoxy is not that it has been tried and has been found lacking, but rather that it has seldom been tried. Why should we listen to folks who are running from a sinking ship tell us how to overhaul and rebuild ours? God doesn't lie, not in in His written Word, nor anywhere else. That means that what He says in His Word is not in error, none of it, His Word cannot err, like as in inerrant."

P.S. (True, Lutheran Orthodoxy did have some unfortunate tendencies, as Preus points out in his books on the subject, but on the whole fabulous)  

Thanks again Pr. Johnson for the updates!
« Last Edit: August 25, 2010, 11:15:56 PM by Durkin_Park »

pbnorth3

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Re: Convocation Third Session Part 1
« Reply #2 on: August 26, 2010, 01:23:02 PM »
Indeed, the problem of rejecting the infallability of Scripture is going to have consequences if the new church body adopts a stand against inerrancy and more in line with HCM. The table would be set for more of the same that is happening in the ELCA.

The updates are good.

Thanks!
Rob Buechler

Paul L. Knudson

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Re: Convocation Third Session Part 1
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2010, 10:06:24 AM »
I would appreciate hearing more on the vibrancy of Lutheran Orthodoxy.  I was a student of Gerhard Forde, having taken numerous courses from him and in the following years reading his writings and going to lectures he gave.  He did seem to have significant trouble with seventeenth century orthodoxy, which it seems to me he saw developing elaborate doctrine that then needed to be accepted in full.  He surely did not dismiss the central importance of doctrine, but he was clear that doctrines, including theories of the atonement do not save, Jesus Christ saves.  When he writes his major work, Theology Is for Proclamation, he brings home the importance and limits of theology, doctrine, in what we are facing today.  He would be championing, I believe, the confessional stance represented by most of us here.  I would think that he would have been comfortable with Hultgren's presentation.

Craig Koester from Luther Seminary is to me a superb New Testament exegete.  His books on the Gospel of John have been ever so helpful me in proclamation over the years.  He clearly uses the historical critical method while not selling out to the Enlightenment.  I am not able to articulate what Hultgren meant with his references to being unable to turn back the clock on the Enlightenment, but he surely was not giving reason or experience authority over the Word.

One of my most shaping experiences in ministry was the opportunity two teach the sixty week Crossways Bible Study, 40 weeks on the Old Testament and 20 on the New.  This took place over a six year period and drew me into the Scriptures in powerful ways.  Along the way I was lead to see creative tensions in books such as Ezra and Nehemiah with Jonah and Ruth.  Both speak in different accents but our Creator and Redeemer God needed his people to hear different but the same authoritative Word.  Using historical critical tools did not necessarily weaken the authority of these books.  To see the book of Deuteronomy as the theological introduction to Joshua, Judges, I and 2 Samuel and Kings etc. also was so helpful in bringing them to bear on our contemporary contexts.  Again the tools of hc were used with clear limits.  This includes the thought that the experience of the exile in Babylon was a very rich chastening time for God's people and had its place in the formation of the Deuteronomic history.  It is my understanding that some of you may have difficulty with that.  I could be wrong.

We may not understand the history of LCMS, but countless ones of us in the fight for confessional Lutheranism and the authority of Scripture now in LCMC and NALC use socalled higher method commentaries in our teaching and proclamation.  To be sure we have major problems with hosts of Biblical exegetes who have gone off into very destructive ways, which Hultgren clearly stated.

Again I am off for the day to a family wedding and will not be able to respond until later.

ptmccain

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Re: Convocation Third Session Part 1
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2010, 10:11:29 AM »
I would appreciate hearing more on the vibrancy of Lutheran Orthodoxy.  I was a student of Gerhard Forde, having taken numerous courses from him and in the following years reading his writings and going to lectures he gave.  He did seem to have significant trouble with seventeenth century orthodoxy, which it seems to me he saw developing elaborate doctrine that then needed to be accepted in full.  He surely did not dismiss the central importance of doctrine, but he was clear that doctrines, including theories of the atonement do not save, Jesus Christ saves.  When he writes his major work, Theology Is for Proclamation, he brings home the importance and limits of theology, doctrine, in what we are facing today.  He would be championing, I believe, the confessional stance represented by most of us here.  I would think that he would have been comfortable with Hultgren's presentation.

Craig Koester from Luther Seminary is to me a superb New Testament exegete.  His books on the Gospel of John have been ever so helpful me in proclamation over the years.  He clearly uses the historical critical method while not selling out to the Enlightenment.  I am not able to articulate what Hultgren meant with his references to being unable to turn back the clock on the Enlightenment, but he surely was not giving reason or experience authority over the Word.

One of my most shaping experiences in ministry was the opportunity two teach the sixty week Crossways Bible Study, 40 weeks on the Old Testament and 20 on the New.  This took place over a six year period and drew me into the Scriptures in powerful ways.  Along the way I was lead to see creative tensions in books such as Ezra and Nehemiah with Jonah and Ruth.  Both speak in different accents but our Creator and Redeemer God needed his people to hear different but the same authoritative Word.  Using historical critical tools did not necessarily weaken the authority of these books.  To see the book of Deuteronomy as the theological introduction to Joshua, Judges, I and 2 Samuel and Kings etc. also was so helpful in bringing them to bear on our contemporary contexts.  Again the tools of hc were used with clear limits.  This includes the thought that the experience of the exile in Babylon was a very rich chastening time for God's people and had its place in the formation of the Deuteronomic history.  It is my understanding that some of you may have difficulty with that.  I could be wrong.

We may not understand the history of LCMS, but countless ones of us in the fight for confessional Lutheranism and the authority of Scripture now in LCMC and NALC use socalled higher method commentaries in our teaching and proclamation.  To be sure we have major problems with hosts of Biblical exegetes who have gone off into very destructive ways, which Hultgren clearly stated.

Again I am off for the day to a family wedding and will not be able to respond until later.


Paul, it is a common bit of mythology that Lutheran Orthodoxy was a cold, sterile exercise in head knowledge and the reason for this common perception is that people have focused ONLY on the heavy dogmatic tomes the orthodox theologians wrote, and usually totally neglected, their lively, deep, rich spirituality.

But, in the last twenty or so years, this has radically changed.

Let me give you but one example.

Many younger pastors, much younger than me mind you, guys in their twenties and thirties, first met the likes of Johann Gerhard, not through his dogmatics, but through his powerful devotional works, and then, after they have come to know him thoroughly through these writings, they turn to his very weighty dogmatics and appreciate them, but because they know him from his devotional works first, they are not put off as much by his dogmatics.

I think, this, in a nutshell summarizes changing perceptions

In my personal experience, it was the personal influence of Dr. Robert Preus (who was one the greatest scholars of Lutheran Orthodoxy ever) that was responsible for my interest in the orthodox fathers. His book, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism is brilliant and I would recommend it to you as the best possible introduction to Lutheran Orthodoxy.

Hope that helps.
« Last Edit: August 29, 2010, 07:39:49 AM by ptmccain »

Paul L. Knudson

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Re: Convocation Third Session Part 1
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2010, 11:21:40 PM »
Been gone all day.  Thanks, Paul, for the added perspective on Lutheran Orthodoxy.

I would be also interested, however, if some of you are at all open to what Hultgren was saying about a limited but important use of the historical critical method.  Exegetes that I see supporting the positions most of us hold on the central truths, summarized so beautifully by Luther in his explanations to the articles of the Creed in the Small Catechism still see value in aspects of the historical critical tools.

I noted a few examples in my earlier post.  It just does not seem to many of us as necessarily anything like a slippery slope to see how God inspired writers of Scripture to bring home His Word to us while not turning them into scribes or forcing us to read all texts in the same manner.  The Psalms are not history.  The Book of Jonah has the most powerful message imaginable even if seen as parabolic.  Jesus taught in parables.  Why cannot God have used parables in the Old Testament  and highly symbolic language in apocalyptic portions of Scripture. 

If you sit under Scripture rather than over it, and if you believe the canon really is significant and came to be for God given reasons, not just by chance, you do not need to end up with the notion that, of course, numerous interpretations are valid even if contradictory.

We are together in many ways.  I simply hope that we can learn from one another.  I may well read Robert Preus.  That would surely move me past a stereotype.  It would seem some of you also need to move beyond your pre-judgments of us.

By the way, I do not know if it is true or not for sure, but it is my understanding that in recent years Forde's book, "Theology Is for Proclamation", was widely used at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.  I would hope that is true.  Maybe some of us should covenant together.  We read R. Preus, and you read Forde.  Just a thought.

stephenhultgren

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Re: Convocation Third Session Part 1
« Reply #6 on: September 15, 2010, 10:37:35 PM »