The apostolic letters and the Holy Gospel are often considered books. The Holy Gospel and the holy apostolic letters are not “books,” but rather moments of liturgical action, deriving from the liturgy, where they do not have a simply narrative or purely edifying meaning, but one even more important — precisely an active, sacramental meaning.
Frankly, I grow weary of the conservative Protestant view of Scripture which guards the truth as if it were a thing but not a living one. My problem is not with inerrancy -- Lutherans are adamant that Scripture is infallible and not simply in matters relating to salvation. My problem is what we are left with. The conservative Protestants believe in an inerrant Word that does nothing -- it is merely a fact or words on a page. No Lutheran can be comfortable with such a view. Inerrancy is not a judgment we make about Scripture but rather the character of the God whose words the Word is. This God cannot lie. Just as Satan cannot tell the truth and in telling the truth uses it to deceive or lie, neither can God deceive or lie or use the truth in any way except according to His own nature. So for us the infallibility of the Word is not simply about Scripture but about the God who speaks Scripture.
On the other hand, liberal and progressive Protestants view Scripture as a principle, distinct from its actual words. So that Scripture can say one thing in words and mean another. As an example, the passages that address homosexual behavior may say one thing but their meaning must be played out against the context of love -- love that refuses to condemn and is truest when the person is true to self. It is a game without a winner. No one can know any truth except the momentary truth defined by the person. To say Scripture is infallible here is to speak of something distinct from and aloof over the actual words themselves -- a principle of love. Truth is unrelated to history, fact, or event -- even the Christ event of the cross is merely an example of love and not the actual love that redeems by His blood the sinner captive to sin and its death. No wonder why liberal and progressive Protestants have abandoned the infallibility of Scripture since it has nothing really to do with the actual words on the page whatsoever.
Rome says many of the right things about Scripture but Rome treats Scripture as a possession exercised by an office and a church above Scripture, that defines what Scripture is, and that determines what Scripture says. The sacramentality of the Word is not all that important in a church body in which an office and the holder of that office sit above the Word. How important is a Word that does what it says when that Word is tethered to a man? The other thing about Rome is its wholehearted embrace of higher criticism that creates a wedge between the Word as we know it and that Word as history, fact, and truth. Rome has cozied up to the Protestants who have built a wall between the Jesus of Scripture and the Jesus of history for too long to trust what Rome says about the Word. Yes, Benedict XVI has more faithfully expounded the role and character of Scripture than many of his recent predecessors but Rome has long ignored and conveniently forgotten what popes have said -- good and bad. No, Lutherans are not immune from the failure to confess we were wrong but Rome is filled with contradictory teachers and teachings that make it hard to believe what Rome says about the Word even when what they are saying sounds good. Not to mention the abysmal state of preaching within Roman Catholicism!
The confessional Lutheran stands almost alone and nearly unique in addressing Scripture not simply as words on a page in a book but as the living voice of God who does what He says through His speaking. It is a sacramental Word, an efficacious Word, and a Spirit filled Word that holds us captive and brings forth faith in us. That is why the liturgical context is primary for us -- we hear God in our ears and from that hearing faith is formed, nurtured, and nourished. That Word is spoken over water to become baptism, addressed the penitent to absolve, and spoken to bread and wine that they might become the very flesh and blood of our Savior. When we confess such a high view of preaching, we are not speaking of the preacher here but of the very character of that spoken Word -- it does what it says and delivers that of which it speaks. Preaching is held in the highest regard among us and we tend to refer to the pastoral office as the preaching office precisely because this Word is sacramental. No Lutheran in his right mind pits Word against Sacrament but every Lutheran worth his salt confesses the sacramental nature of the Word. We value preaching not because of the quality of the information or inspiration being conveyed to the hearer but because that preached Word is Christ preaching and the preached Word conveys Christ. Our Lutheran problem is not that we value preaching too highly but we have forgotten why we value it so -- preaching is a means of grace because the Word is and we preach the Word (Christ).
All Western traditions have as their Achilles' heel the tendency to make the Word programmatic -- that is to see the Word in terms of the outcome and to define and structure preaching toward an outcome. The same has been done for the Sacraments and the liturgy as well. But worship, liturgy, preaching, and the Sacraments are not programs or programmatic. They are sacramental -- we meet at the beckoning of the Lord who calls through His Word and gathers us in His presence (the Sacraments) so that we might see Him and know Him through these means of grace. Perhaps that is why some of our people have come to content themselves with digital churches and screen worship and preaching -- because they neither expect nor receive Jesus through these means of grace. And we have fed this misunderstanding by presuming the preaching has more to do with the preacher than with Christ and by presuming that the meaningfulness of what happens in the Divine Service is our judgment and not Christ and His gift. By the way, this is the same problem with Bible studies that attempt to impart knowledge apart from Christ -- for apart from Christ it is merely curiosity about words and ideas that are powerless to affect us unless and until we decide they have meaning.
I will admit that I have not read anything by Florensky but that quote but I think he is getting at the problem that is endemic not simply to Protestantism but to most Western Christianity. I only pray that we Lutherans are smart enough to realize that this fallacy of this inerrant and ultimately impotent Word is not who we are.
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