Pathetic conversation. . .

For some reason, we think it is always better to be in dialogue than not.  That is decidedly true of the ecumenical conversations.  There was a time when serious minded people had serious minded conversations.  I think back to the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues which began with such earnestness and gave birth to some very weighty tomes.  They did not end as well as they began although that might be due to the changes that took place within Lutheranism and in Rome by the final volumes of essays produced.  Certainly the justification statement by the two involved some creative interpretation of past statements as well as current negotiated agreement in order for either to claim a certain amount of satisfaction in place of integrity.  Missouri's own robust participation in the beginning gave way to a mere spectator perspective willing to throw potshots at the final statements.  As right as those criticisms might have been, the fact that they came from the peanut gallery and not from full fledged dialogue partners seems to mitigate the value of it all (well, in my mind, at least).  Now, as I reported earlier, the Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue has produced some kind of agreement on the filioque.  It is a curious agreement but that is not the only odd thing about it.  It was also minus Missouri and made with the Lutheran Federation partners who can agree on sexuality more than their own confessional documents.  What value is this?

While I can always fault Missouri for preferring the nosebleed seats to a real seat at the table, it is precisely Missouri and her International Lutheran Council friends who ought to be the ones Rome and Constantinople seek out for conversation.  At least we mean what we say and are serious about being Lutheran.  How can you represent Lutheranism to any other tradition unless you are serious about it?  The ELCA and its host of ecumenical friends in America (not Lutheran) and its international allies in the Lutheran World Federation are the least serious ecumenical partners the folks from the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople could be talking to but they aren't and we aren't interested either.  I can only wish for the day when we would put the brightest and best of us around a table and tell them to have at it over what divides us.  For it is only by true to who we are that we can approach one another with any degree of integrity in pursuit of understanding and possible rapprochement.  It will not solve anything if Lutherans come embarrassed by their Lutheranism or Roman Catholics or Orthodox are equally ill at ease by their past and present theological perspective.  We will not gain anything by being bad representatives of our theology or confession and if we do achieve agreement it is worthless.

What good does it do for Rome to find some commonality with the LWF crowd when the elephant in the room is the ordination of women, the embrace of same-sex marriage, and the adoption of the gender alphabet soup?  What value is it if we put at a table people who do not like or want to believe the Word of God and who insist that the Word as we have it cannot convey the true Jesus of history.  What will Orthodoxy get from a Lutheran crowd that may just set aside the filioque but at the same time sets aside every faithful doctrine that conflicts with the current reason, experience, or worldview of modernity?  Jiminy Cricket, it is cool and all but it is the fakest coolness there is and it turns putrid the longer you look at it and the deeper you dig into it.  Come on, people!  If there is any value in dialogue or any hope in a theological conversation, could we agree that the only folks allowed at the table are those who believe in their own tradition?