This summer the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) held their biennial Churchwide Assembly. As is so often the case with American Christianity, the headline grabbing issue was sex. The Assembly didn’t exactly affirm or endorse homosexuality, but, after agreeing to disagree about the moral significance of homosexual relationships, it opened up the possibility for same-sex blessings and homosexual clergy.
In a recent reflection posted on the new website Lutherans Persisting, David S. Yeago provides some insightful observations about how a faithful Lutheran should think about this (and other) bad decisions. They just strike me as right.
Yeago foregoes arguments against the permissive actions of the Churchwide Assembly. It’s not that the arguments are unimportant, but, by Yeago’s reckoning, a person committed to traditional Christian sexual morality faces a more immediate challenge. There is a pressing spiritual question, “a question,” as he puts it, “about how we are to live in a fallen and erring church.” What is the vocation of the faithful amidst a great deal of confusion and some outright false teaching?
The main thrust of Yeago’s answer comes by way of Martin Luther’s 1519 commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. The Letter to the Galatians is full of heated rhetoric. St. Paul is keen to counter the influence of those who “want to pervert the gospel of Christ” (1:7), and he gives no quarter in his brief against what he regards as a betrayal of the gospel. Needless to say, Luther himself needed little encouragement in this regard. Yet, when he came to some of the final portions of the Letter, Luther turns (as does St. Paul) to counsels of patience and forbearance.
The passage Yeago draws attention to concerns Luther’s comments on Galatians 6:1-2. In those verses, St. Paul writes, “Brethren, if a man is overtaken by any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Luther’s interpretation is straightforward. Our zeal for truth must be animated by a spirit of love. As Gregory the Great observed (and Luther quotes in his commentary), “True righteousness has compassion, false righteousness is indignant.”
Yeago points out that the St. Paul’s guidance had real consequences for Luther. He had already embarked on his polemics against the “heresies and crimes” of Rome, but even as tensions were rising in 1519, Luther denounced separation and self-justifications that fall back onto (as Yeago puts it) easy slogans. Luther does not counsel “Get thee out of Babylon.” On the contrary, he criticizes the followers of Jan Hus, and he urges his growing party of would-be reformers to draw ever closer to “wicked priests and bishops.” “Even if you were at the ends of the ocean,” Luther writes with his characteristically vivid urgency, if you were to follow St. Paul’s teaching, “you would come running to them and weep, warn, reprove, and do absolutely everything.” And then, with direct reference to his own situation, Luther exhorts himself and his followers to be true to the law of Christ: “We, who are bearing the burdens and truly intolerable abominations of the Roman Curia-are we too fleeing and seceding on this account? Perish the thought! Perish the thought!”
Of course, events overtook Luther’s vision-excommunication, military conflicts, and separation. Perhaps, as Yeago allows, Luther and the other Reformers failed to live up to the Pauline ideal. In any event, the fact of denominationalism certainly prevents any easy analogy between Luther in 1519 and an American Christian today. Yet, as Yeago insists, Luther’s youthful exhortation to remain within the bounds of communion has a permanent ring of scriptural truth.
As Yeago makes clear, the Pauline exhortation to bear another’s burdens blocks a simplistic way of thinking (not at all unique to Lutherans I might add), one that imagines false teaching a clear and sufficient reason for leaving for more orthodox pastures. We cannot sit back with a checklist of essential doctrines and coolly judge our churches apostate. The baptized are always already incorporated into a fellowship that makes a claim on our love. Each of us has a vocation of Christian service in our communities, and we should not imagine that doctrinal or moral decisions by church bureaucracies and various assemblies, however misguided, suspend our call to serve each other in faith.
Needless to say, Yeago also knows that St. Paul worries about the corruptive effect of false teaching and immorality. In 1 Corinthians 5, for example, we find sharply worded advice: “Do not associate with any one who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of immorality” (5:11). There are plenty of other passages in the bible that encourage rigorous standards for communal purity.
Here Yeago makes two observations. First, we need to avoid fixing all of our attention on denominational decisions. Faithful Lutherans pastors need to ask: Does the stupid decision this summer prevent me from preaching the gospel and raising up saints to serve the Lord? Ordinary men and women in the pews need to ask a similar question: Does the decision corrupt my role in the communion of saints? There is no single answer to these questions. But in the main, Yeago is right to observe that-at least today and tomorrow-a faithful synod or local church might be embarrassed or even scandalized, but it can largely continue in the good work it has been doing in the past.
This may change. We should not underestimate the totalitarian trajectory of heterodoxy. As Richard John Neuhaus famously said, “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.” But Yeago is right to put the focus on the present. As Jesus once said: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day” (Matt. 6:34).
The second observation concerns the deeply personal nature of our responses to the burdens of ecclesial failure. As Yeago puts it, we all have different breaking-points. For some in the ELCA, the decisions this summer will push them to make a move that they have been contemplating for a long time. For others, a sense of anger or betrayal or just plain exhaustion over the seemingly endless trench warfare in the advance of the cause of gay rights in mainline Christianity will simply become too much. “No one,” Yeago writes, “should sit in judgment of the decisions faithful people make under these circumstances.”
I once wrote a book defending the spiritual vocation of loyalty to a declining mainline denomination-and I eventually left when I recognized that my own spiritual mediocrity left me unable to live up to St. Paul’s vision of a Christ-like sacrifice. So readers should not be surprised that I have sympathy for David Yeago’s Pauline admonitions-and that I am consoled by his generous concessions the opaque and uncertain and sin-weakened condition of each person.
But I am more than consoled. Since my entrance into the Catholic Church, I have become more and more aware of the importance of personal discernment, which Yeago rightly emphasizes. It is a perversion of our age-one shared I might add by both Protestants and Catholics-that we think ourselves capable of coolly judging or assessing or somehow weighing the orthodoxy of our churches by what we imagine to be objective criteria.
This approach is wrongheaded. Yes, we have the scriptures, and we have a patrimony of theological wisdom. But it is important to recognize that the church is not created by confessions. She is not a theological artifact, nor is she a catechism or set of doctrines. The church is body of Christ, a primal fact that guides the reading of scripture, supports confessions, and gives birth to doctrines. Events may force us to make a fundamental decision about our ecclesial community. But to act independently, to step outside the fellowship of faith and navigate forward on our own-this circumstance brings more blindness than clarity of vision, and it requires far more prayer than theological analysis. So, yes, the decisions made by the ELCA last summer are wayward. The future is not rosy for Lutherans or other mainline Protestants who care about orthodoxy. But no wavering Protestant should step back and tote up the apostasies of the UCC or Episcopal Church or ELCA. The truth of Christ comes clearest when one is closest, and this requires drawing near rather than stepping back. As a former mainline Protestant who hovered at a distance for longer than I care to admit, I can report that, without an abiding loyalty to a church (however debilitated, however removed for its true source), there is no reliable list of essential doctrines, no confident navigation by biblical principles.
Yeago helps his readers see their options. He and others cannot hover on the edges of the ELCA, denouncing its drift and regretting its decline. One either recommits oneself to the troubled world of mainline Protestantism with articulate criticisms, but also with a spirit of sacrifice, as he so powerfully evokes. Or one stumbles forward-who can see in advance by what uncertain steps?-and abandons oneself, not to “orthodoxy” or “true doctrine” or “good theology,” but to the tender care of Mother Church.
R.R. Reno, features editor at First Things, is a professor of theology at Creighton University.
Comments:
But what of ordinary parishioners who are concerned about their impressionable children growing up in a declining denomination and being subjected to an unclear, if not altogether false, understanding of the gospel? It is one thing to accept the road of sacrifice for oneself; it is quite another to sacrifice one's own offspring for the sake of staying. Might Reno have different advice for the laity?
You said: "But no wavering Protestant should step back and tote up the apostasies of the UCC or Episcopal Church or ELCA. The truth of Christ comes clearest when one is closest, and this requires drawing near rather than stepping back. As a former mainline Protestant who hovered at a distance for longer than I care to admit, I can report that, without an abiding loyalty to a church (however debilitated, however removed for its true source), there is no reliable list of essential doctrines, no confident navigation by biblical principles."
There is something about what you are saying here that is very wrong -- especially considering that you are a convert to the Catholic Church. It's difficult to pin it down precisely. But I think that you need to meditate on the facts that truth cannot contradict truth, and that Jesus has called us all to be one. In light of these, I think the best response to the apparent apostasy of one's own "church" is to be open to the possibility that God is letting one see this apostasy so that one can get out of there and into the real Church. Sometimes the only way God can convince us that our historical, theological, and ecclesiological assumptions have been hand-picked to keep us in an inadequate ecclesial community is for Him to let us see the apostasy of that community first hand -- to let us see it in a way that forces us to get righteously angry at that apostasy.
You say: "I eventually left when I recognized that my own spiritual mediocrity left me unable to live up to St. Paul’s vision of a Christ-like sacrifice." It's not spiritual mediocrity that causes a person to see that truth shines like a beacon from the Catholic Church as it does from no other. It's God knocking at the door of your heart and mind. Sometimes he knocks hard, with a list of evidence that your current community has contradicted itself, the divine law, and the natural law. When he knocks with that information, he might be asking us to leave where we our in order to go find the truth.
I don't know if I've put my finger on what I find upsetting in your article, or whether I've even understood your article. But there it is.
Sincerely,
ND
It is man who has corrupted that redemptive process. We cannot trust that the "church" is the repository of theology. That collective wisdom is in Sacred Scripture alone. It is man--through institutional artifice--who messed His message up.
This recent decision of the ELCA does not surprise; it only confirms what has been happening throughout church history--flawed man making flawed decisions. Keep one's eyes on the Word, and the Word shall set you free.
With all due respect, we Lutherans must continue to point out that at its very fundamental center the Roman Church errs and departs from the true tender care of the "mother that begets and bears every Christian by the Word of God" (Luther, Large Catechism).
And let's not forget the agony of what passes for Catholicism in this country, where we have a buffet of baffling error and falsehood offered up.
Witness, for example, this interesting Mass:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh_nqtp3VrU
The question is not whether there is such a thing as orthodoxy, true doctrine, or good theology --- of course there is. The question is whether any one human being has, on his own, the intellectual and spiritual resources to be the final arbiter for himself on matters of orthodoxy.
Speaking now for myself, I would say that a church to which one cannot "submit oneself" is not a church to which one truly "belongs."
A unity that truly though tenuously was to be found in both Lutheran and Roman fundamental texts issued by Luther,Calvin, and Trent
Building upon this unity, our Roman and Lutheran brothers and sisters have been taking the next step in our joint historical and theological search--a search to be built upon unity through the scriptural and theological analysis and meaning of
communion that informs and activates our ministerial acts, unifies our authoritative scriptures, and makes available that extraordinary sacramental life that makes manifest the Kingdom of God and his Church.
We are closer to the fundamental meaning of unity and communion now more than ever in our 500 years of unnecessary and scandalous separation. Such an historic moment, akin to that Great Day of the Lord, should make us shudder to think what will happen to us all if we ignore or waste it.
"Orthodox evangelical Protestantism is the true alternative to the apostasy of the mainline denoninations."
Oh, c'mon.
1) What claim can a belief system that did not even exist until the 16th century (at its earliest--after all, most Protestants belong to sects founded long after the Reformation) have to Christian orthodoxy, given the fact that Christianity was founded about 1500 years prior to "Protestant orthodoxy"? I'm just sayin' . . .
2) What the heck IS "orthodox evangelical Protestantism"? Is it Lutheran, Calvinist, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Arminian, Restorationist, Holiness, Pentecostal, Adventist, Dispensationalist, or what? I'm just sayin' . . .
3) Referring to "organizational diversity" among Protestants is a little disingenuous. The divisions among Protestants, even the "orthodox" are on core doctrinal matters, and even when doctrines are mutually identical, there's virtually no "full communion" among the various Protestant denominations. I chalk this up to everyone wanting to be their own pastor and not subject themselves to the demands of corporate fellowship. That's all good and dandy, but that ethos is very unBiblical. It reeks of 17th century classic liberal atomism.
4) To refer to Catholic and Orthodox distinctives as unBiblical just begs the question, and to this student of history the accusation reads very hollow, considering the fact that both historically and numerically Protestants are a tiny minority of Christians. The vast majority of Christians belong to churches which celebrate seven sacraments, pray to saints, identify justification with sanctification, have a monarchical episcopate, venerate the monastic life, include the deuterocanon in the Bibles, etc. And they believe all these things are compatible with the Scriptures, which they have been reading for 2000 years, and which permeate everything these churches do liturgically.
You're entitled to your Protestant "traditions of men," but to refer to any Catholic doctrine as "blatantly unBiblical" betrays the worst kind of narrow-mindedness.
The key thing is, the Vatican and most protestants recognize that the True Church is an invisible church that is not equivalent to the Church of Rome or any one Protestant denomination. The main difference of opinion is where the center of that church is. The Vatican thinks that the center is Roman Catholicism and that many Protestants are also part of that church. Modern Protestants see the true center as being outside the center of any one denomination including Roman Catholicism but the True Church itself overlaps with many denominations including Roman Catholicism.
Because of the consensus that the Truth Church is an invisible church, Vatican II and the joint statement from "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" about faith and works, and the Vatican encouragement about reading the Bible (that was something I was never encouraged to do), there has been great progress in moving both Roman Catholicism and Protestants closer together. Make no mistake, both sides moved with giving up the essentials. Hopefully, the Vatican talks with the Eastern Orthodoxy Church (which does not have a Marian doctrine or the Council of Trent) for a common communion succeed, since that will likely move Rome and the Eastern Orthodoxy closer to the first millennium theology they once shared and thus closer to their roots. This move might make a common communion between Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestants eventually possible.
The sacriments illustrate one key failing of the Roman Catholic church -- sentimentality. Once something is set above other things, the Vatican over centuries tends to elevate them until they are sacred. That's also how Mariology became so prominent. Originally, Mary was just the Mother of God to counter the Arian Heresy, but that sentiment grew over time until Mary became more important than Jesus (if you don't believe me, look at how any Hail Marys there are in a rosary and compare it to the number of Our Fathers. Or compare it to the number of Hail Marys to Our Fathers a priest gives you after confession).
1) Let me begin by saying that it's not quite accurate to say that "the Vatican" (by which you mean to say, "Catholicism") teaches that the True Church is not visible. As has been clarified on more than one occasion Catholics DO identify the True Church with The Catholic Church. (Not "the Roman church," by which is means the Roman Archdiocese or, at most, the Latin Patriarchate).
However, this teaching is balanced by a conviction that one may be in an imperfect communion with the One True Church, and so in some sense hold membership even when they, well, are not formally members.
2) No intelligent Catholic has ever denied that the faith develops over the centuries, though you grossly exagerrate when you say that key doctrine that currently separate most orthodoxy Protestants from Rome, such as "the doctrines about Mary and Papal infallibility are scarcely over 100 years, seeming to pop out of nowhere."
For you to make such a statement, I can only assume that you haven't devoted any serious attention to the study of patristic and medieval literature. I don't say this by way of insult, just that a little humility is in order when one is so blatantly ignorant of Christian history.
3) As to doctrinal development, orthodox Catholicism has always steered a middle course between the twin errors of Liberal Protestantism (according to which the very content of dogmatic truth can and does radically change from one generation to the next) and conservative Protestant primitivism (whereby doctrinal development is supposedly frozen with the apostles, and it's our job to re-invent the wheel every generation, as we try to imitate the Apostolic Church in precisely every respect).
The true faith develops, the way living organisms develop: that which is implicit in the original deposit of faith is explicated through the centuries, heresy inspired the Church to clarify her teachings, and where the Church at one point in history may permit a wide range of opinion she at a later date may determine that one or more of the previously-permitted hypotheses are in fact heretical.
So in determining which is the true, original church, one does not look for which institution is a perfect carbon-copy of the church as she existed in, say, the year 800. One asks oneself: was the early church a primitive version of the Catholic Church, or a primitive version of, say, Seventh-Day Adventism?
When comparing Catholics, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrians the answer is less-than-obvious, since these four churches share virtually every doctrine, with each other and with the early church. But when it comes to Protestantism, the answer is rather easy. The early church was not Protestant.
4) I would hold that the notion that the entire Church can go apostate is unBiblical, not to mention unreasonable, leading as it does to some absurd conclusions. Such an assertion puts the entire Christian faith in jeopardy, not least the Bible canon.
I'm not able to make much sense of your post, especially your first paragraph, since I don't see how it relates to anything I have written.
Your understanding of the history of sacramental celebration is also flawed. It IS true that in the early days of the church the word "sacrament", or "mystery," had a much broader connotation. ANYTHING sacred could be called such, such as the Creed, Christian burial, the doctrines of the faith, the Bible, etc.
But given the late medieval definition of sacrament ("outward signs of inward grace, instituted by Christ for our sanctification"), we can easily say that the early church celebrated seven sacraments. One very simple proof of this is the doctrine and practice of the separated Eastern Churches: Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian. These traditions have more or less retained the broader definition of "sacrament" (or, rather, "mystery") yet when in the early modern period they began to assume the medieval Catholic definition for catechetical purposes, they all unanimously agreed with the Catholics that there exist seven sacraments of the New Law.
The notion that there are only two sacraments (or "ordinances") is a late Protestant "tradition of man," utterly discontinuous with the living tradition of the historic Church(es).
The "Hail Mary" prayer is both Biblical and Christocentric; the whole raison d'etre of the rosary is payerful meditation: one meditates on the mysteries of the life of Jesus, placing himself in the position of Mary, who is a microcosm of the Church and the Christian par excellence.
If you really want to know emblematic spirituality, look at the Mass. Especially since the reforms of 1970, I don't think there's ENOUGH invocation of the saints in the Roman rite!
I'm proud of my personal relationship with God and His Saints -- living and faithful departed. "Just-Me-n-Jesus" is not Biblical Christianity.
As for the Marian doctrines, I *am* familiar with the writings of the Church Fathers. Here's a good refer to where they speech about Mary
http://www.northforest.org/EarlyChurchFathers/MaryRef.html
They widely state that Mary was a virgin, and an ever-virgin (something Protestants don't like to hear), and some held that she was bodily assumed and a very few even believed that she was made the Queen of Angels. Some saw her as the second Eve. There is amazement that she could house God in her womb, so there is speculation that she must be extremely special and possibly free of sin.
Clearly Mary was loved, but when it came to writing down the Apostle's Creed and Nicene Creed, all that's said is that Mary was a virgin and the Mother of God (to counteract the Arian heresy). Nothing more. A person's belief about Mary did not affect whether a person could call oneself a Catholic. If a high view of Mary was a requirement for salvation, why wasn't this mentioned in the core creeds? The love for Mary is a part of history, but not a matter for doctrine any more than the belief that The Gospel of Mark was written from Peter's sermons. The problem with making historical beliefs doctrines is that they place unnecessary restrictions on what one needs to believe to be a part of the True Church. There is absolutely no reason to make these doctrines as they have nothing to do with salvation, and that is why I say that the push to make them doctrines came out of nowhere.
WRT the evolving of doctrines, this is the core of the issue. I think the Eastern Orthodoxy have one thing right -- the Western Church (Roman Catholics and Protestants) won't let a mystery be a mystery and prefers to fill in details for which we haven't been given details with speculation. IMO, makes the opposite error in glorifying the mystery to the extreme. But regardless, the Western Church is beginning to appreciate this wisdom, which is why there is some reconciliation like the Second Vatican Council and more recently the joint statement on Faith and Works from "Evangelicals and Catholics Together", and why the Vatican is looking for ways to broaden its communion, while Orthodoxy Protestant lines are no longer hostile to each other and have communion with each other.
Eric, please follow the lead of Rome and have the humility to break bread with your separated brethren. Ultimately, it's in the hands of God exactly where the boundaries of the True Church lies.
You're obviously a much more nuanced thinker than was my initial impression. Forgive me if I was rash in my judgment.
Respectfully, I would suggest that you're reading too much into the Creed. The articles of the Creed are brief bullet-points, intended to serve as a kind of synechdoche of all the articles of orthodox Christian faith, with no pretension that these Creeds are set in stone, with no room for development.
This is why, for instance, the Apostles' and (original) Nicene Creed make no explicit reference to the Divinity of the Holy Spirit (come to think of it, the Apostles' Creed is not explicit with regard to Christ's divinity either), and no early formulaic creed that I know of mentions the Lord's Supper, precisely what one must do to be saved, any mention of what books constitute Scripture, and I could go on.
Whether any church has gone too far one way or another will necessarily be conditioned on which one believes is the True Church. The modern Eastern polemic against Western "dogmatism" is very laughable, given the history of doctrinal development. Keep in mind that the early Christological controversies, where blood was shed literally over an iota, were waged primarily in the East, where the West saw no need to elaboration of the "simple" truths of Trinitarian faith. Orthodox squabbles over the filioque clause, along with all kinds of mini-schisms caused over the stupidest of liturgical minutiae, put the lie to the claim that they're happy with some vaguely defined "mystery." They may not use the word "transubstantiation," but thery're just as adamant of the fact that Protestants are heretical over their Eucharistic doctrine. No, they don't call it Purgatory, but they're as adamant as any Scholastic that the soul after death undergoes spiritual purification, which is painful and assisted along by the prayers and sacrifices of the living. And I could go on.
In short, the Eastern objections to Western "dogmatism" is a red herring; every denomination (Catholics included) have their vices, and that of the East is an inferiority complex that causes them to disparage everything "Western", even when it's rooted in the teachings of their own Western saints. They love finding differences when there are none.
As for my own church, I am very ecumenically-minded, and am of one mind with the present Holy Father, that Church unity will require give-and-take on all sides. But we Catholics are bound by our dogmas, which we believe to be infallibly determined by God's Church (a process that did not end in the year 787). Of course God knows where His church is: He's told us it's in his Catholic Church, the one He founded. If God ALONE knows where His church is, how are unbelievers ever to find it?
"Mary was just the Mother of God to counter the Arian Heresy, but that sentiment grew over time until Mary became more important than Jesus (if you don't believe me, look at how any Hail Marys there are in a rosary and compare it to the number of Our Fathers. Or compare it to the number of Hail Marys to Our Fathers a priest gives you after confession). "
How silly.
Anybody can play such a silly game. Let's refute the charge against Catholicism first: the central act of prayer in the Catholic Church is the Mass. Count the number of times Jesus is mentioned in the Mass (well over 100). Mary is usually mentioned three to six times in a Mass. Look at the center of the Church. Our focus is always on Christ crucified. We gaze on the wounds of Christ and the Agony of Christ because it is what saved us.
Now let's move onto Protestantism. Why do Protestants not gaze on Christ crucified in their churches? Is it because they preach a different gospel? The Church of Christ is to proclaim Christ Crucified, not the silly banner draped over the empty cross that is used as a logo by some of the mainline churches. And what is it about the roosters on the weathervanes on the tops of so many Presbyterian churches? Have they tossd out the cross of Christ entirely for the cock of the walk?
Serious discussion means we get beyond the inanities offered by Abel Myers. One of the first things a Catholic learns if he/she goes to a decent Catholic high school is the difference between the honor accorded Jesus and Mary. Mary is honored more highly than any of the other saints. They are accorded doulia (veneration), and she is accorded hyperdoulia (heightened veneration). Only God, though, is accorded latria (adoration).
I am so happy that Catholicism does offer Mary hyperdoulia. She is the Sweet Mother of God that gave us the Baby Jesus. She conceived Him and bore Him. She nursed Him and raised Him. Finally, she stood with Him in His Agony on the Cross and then cradled Him in her arms while He lay dead and broken. She and God the Father gave us our Savior. He died for our sins.
Professor Reno, your words are a comfort to me. They help frame the reasonable, faithful argument for how and why someone would seek to counsel with a sinful church. It may be that this decision isn't meant for everyone. I think the church I attend will finally be able to move on to focus on God's work, or, at least, that's my prayer.
But I and others remain--traditionalist witnesses with compassionate hearts.